Strays

It must be really difficult being tasked with editing the trailer for a comedy movie. How to get bums on cinema seats but also not ruin all the best jokes?!

It’s also equally difficult reviewing a comedy movie (or any movie in fact) without harking back to the trailer and judging it based on what was included in there.

Strays, like many before it, is a big victim of ‘comedy trailer syndrome’. When that dropped, it was such a forehead-slappingly obvious idea to make a lewd, R-rated comedy with dogs and the trailer delivered in spades.

Much like Cocaine Bear this year though, you’re better off saving 90 minutes of your life and just sticking to watching that 3 minutes or so on YouTube, that’s where you’ll find pretty much everything good here.

It’s such a shame. This is an immensely likable film: who doesn’t want to watch some lovable dogs swear their way through a road trip? But it just simply isn’t very good.

Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher and Randall Park (how did this fall so short with a comedy ensemble that good?!) do their best with the material, and there are some rib-tickling moments, but it falls very much in the stupid camp that the aforementioned Cocaine Bear also slipped into.

Some great moments and clever lines lost amongst the murk of unfunny improv’, randomness and just too much unnecessary distractions. Once again, all those funny jokes are in the trailer.

A great idea in theory that just doesn’t quite work in practice. This one very much is just for Christmas.

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