The following article was produced in partnership with Universal Pictures’ Strays.
Leave your kids at home; they might want to sit this one out.
From the humans that brought you 21 Jump Street & Cocaine Bear, comes the hilarious new comedy that’s set to get your tongues wagging. Now available through Home Entertainment Release, Strays not only flips the script on the tired animated animal story, it tears it to shreds and pisses on it with an awry smile.
Directed by Josh Greenbaum and written by Dan Perrault, Strays is a rowdy subversion of the live-action dog movie genre with unrelenting laughs throughout. It’s like Dolittle, if the human protagonist was a dead-beat stoner whose animals grew to despise him and wanted to bite his dick off… yeah, just like Dolittle.
Strays introduces us to a perverse world in which our pets hate us, through an all-star cast of Hollywood’s heaviest hitters such as Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher and Randall Park. It’s a confronting take, given the way we treat our furbabies with unapologetic love and affection. But let’s face it: we could’ve seen this one coming.
Strays
Sit, stay and cancel your plans! The debaucherous new comedy will have you begging for more.
Go on, do the weekend right – doggy style.
We all have a tendency to project human personalities onto the furry friends in our lives; we give our pets silly human names such as Charlie or Mr. Fluffy Butt and wonder why they love to give us the side eye when we pass them in the kitchen.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, we’re constantly harassing them with our enduring list of problems; they’re unpaid therapists – something that Strays expertly leans on through Hunter the emotional support Great Dane – but we’ll never truly know what they’re thinking. If Strays is any indication, perhaps we probably don’t want to find out…
Voiced by the legendary comedic talent of Will Ferrell, Reggie, is a naïve relentlessly optimistic Border Terrier whose experiences in the real world are few and far between. Instead, Reggie relies on the neglectful care of his owner, Doug, played by Will Forte, whose priorities are more inclined to watching porn and getting high instead of caring for his little Reggie, until his world is flipped upside down.
WATCH Behind the scenes of Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx on the set of Strays below.
“To play someone who just sees the best in everything and everyone was a really fun thing to do for me,” Ferrell said. “There’s a real innocence, sweetness and earnestness to Reg, and it’s really fun to watch him describe fetch-and-f***, this amazing, diabolical game. To have him explain it to his new friends and watch his world kind of collapse around him and realize that everything he believed in is now thrown out the window, was a really interesting and enjoyable experience.”
Reggie is abandoned, left to fend for himself on the mean city streets by his heartless owner until he’s adopted by three street-wise dogs. Exposed to the realities of the world through the skewed lens of Bug (Jamie Foxx), a foul-mouthed, horny little Boston Terrier, that you’re more like to find on a register than the end of a lead, Doug enjoys a crash course in the hairy, hedonistic world of the strays.
“I love that Bug lives by the rule of ‘the moment they leash you up and snip your balls is the moment they’ve got you by them,’” Foxx says. “He’s the friend that Reggie never knew he needed because Reggie has been burned by this blind commitment to a human who treats him like garbage. Bug’s got some battle scars, and he is the only one who can help Reggie survive on the streets.”
This wide-eyed Border Terrier is taught the inhibited way of the stray; a liberating haven for tail-chasing dogs without owners, where you can hump anything you want, piss to mark your territory and get unbelievably high on drugs and alcohol away from the watchful eye of the humans…it’s a dog’s life for me.
Reggie’s eyes are opened and finally realises that he was in a toxic relationship the entire time. With the help of his new friends, this plucky Border Terrier begins to plot the appropriate revenge on his apathetic owner and go after the thing he loves the most.
Directed by Josh Greenbaum and written by Dan Perrault, Strays is certainly not your typical timid comedy; it’s an audacious retelling of the genre that still manages to retain the heart and feelings of this familiar story. Although there’s no pussyfooting around as Ferrell and Foxx lead an ensemble cast to unleash a relentless barrage of gags and punchlines that plunge the audience headfirst into the gutter, revelling in the chaos and cesspool of bodily fluids created by this loveable band of strays.
Strays is now available to buy or rent from the comfort of your home or on the go!