Strays is a one-trick pony. Comedy requires clever skill to stay ahead of the audience but this script gets old because it only doubles down on crude shock value. Without a single idea beyond that gimmick, this is an SNL skit painfully stretched to feature length. Raunchiness can be an effective ingredient but is paper-thin on its own. There's forced dialogue, blunt exposition, redundant scenes, monotonous characters, groaner jokes, and aimless filler. The drama beats are generic, obvious, and insincere. Its voice acting has some energy (Foxx) but is mostly passionless (Ferrell). Overall, Strays is played out, annoying, and transparent because there's no thought put into it.
Technically, Strays is lazy. Its stale direction has no personality, variety, or progression. The music is pointlessly poppy, irrelevant to mood, and blatantly apathetic. Its production design looks cheap and careless. The cinematography is about as basic as possible. Its cast is just dogs with a couple weak cameos and mild-effort voicing. The effects are tacky, awkward, and distracting. Its editing has flashy montages, jump cuts, and transitions, but its absentminded structure lacks momentum and efficiency. The sound uses distortions, exaggeration, and voiceovers, yet is mostly simple. Ultimately, Strays feels like they made it up as they went along and that low effort is insulting.
Writing: 2/10
Direction: 1/10
Cinematography: 3/10
Acting: 3/10
Editing: 4/10
Sound: 5/10
Score/Soundtrack: 3/10
Production Design: 2/10
Casting: 3/10
Effects: 3/10
Overall Score: 2.9/10
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