Strays

 Strays is the sort of film that's kind of immune to criticism - a gleefully dumb, very R-rated comedy about four talking dogs on a quest to bite someone's dick off. Unless they completely fuck up the jokes, you pretty much know if you're going to like it going in, don't you?
 So... they mostly  don't fuck up the jokes. There's some funny stuff, some weirdness, and a lot of cute dogs. And There's a bunch of good gags that weren't on the trailer. There you go, make of that what you will

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 Will Ferrell plays Reggie, a very cute, terminally optimistic Border Terrier with a dipshit owner (Will Forte) who hates his guts. Reggie is blind to just how badly he's being mistreated until his owner abandons him in the middle of the city.

 There he's taken in by Bug (Jamie Foxx), a no-bullshit Boston Terrier that introduces him to the stray lifestyle and his two friends Maggie (Isla Fisher with her native accent because she's playing an Australian Sheperd) and Hunter (Randall Park), an overtly genial cone-wearing Great Dane.

 Horrified when Reggie tells them about the 'good times' he's had with his owner, the other dogs help Reggie realize that he's in a toxic relationship. Pissed off, he vows to go back home and bite his owner's dick off. The others, partly because they're drunk (from drinking bin juice outside a pub) encourage him and decide to tag along.

 The problem: Reggie's house is out in the boondocks, and all he's got is a few landmarks to go by. But he's nothing if not optimistic, so off they all go. The trip includes a psychedelic freakout, a run-in with police dogs on the hunt for a missing girl, and a bunch of other misadventures. Also: lots of jokes about humping, shitting, pissing, and Hunter's enormous dick; it's as profane as they could make it, which is fine because decent amount of jokes land.
 There's also a lot of simple, observational dog humor. This ranges from them talking about sex positions (there's only one: normal style), staging a fireworks scene as if it was the end of the world, chats about how much they hate mailmen, and some funny business about spinning around before going to sleep. It's been done a thousand times before (particularly that hoary mailman thing - that dates at least from the fifties), but the voice cast is very game, the writing is decent and the dogs are lovely.

 Writer Dan Perrault (with, I'm guessing, an ad-libbing assist from the crew? There are some very Ferrell lines in this, though he didn't get a credit) does allow the script to go off on some bizarre, funny tangents - my favorite has got to be a Labrador Retriever (Josh Gad) who constantly narrates the events of his owner's life in a folksy drawl while gentle music plays in the background. These people know their dog movies. Unfortunately most of the script isn't as inspired as that, but there are a few other good, goofy non-sequiturs in that vein there.

 Not everything works. The film takes real canine footage and digitally adds in the lip sync, which is a problem when the dialog is shot like human dialog - you've got a mostly still dog whose lips are moving in an unnatural way; it doesn't look great. The film seems to recognize this and tries to make its scenes more dynamic (and the dogs, and their trainers, do a great job of it) but not nearly enough. The directing (by Josh Greenbaum) is, as in most comedies these days, unobtrusive and fairly personality-free.

 Not all of the jokes work, but that's to be expected. Also to be expected, but always disappointing, is that there are some rote life lessons that aren't quite subverted - your typical case of modern comedies wanting to have their cake and eat it. But that's ok. The film remains likeable, its heart is in the right place, and just look at all those very good boys and girls!