BEFORE: The most logical next film to watch is "A House of Dynamite", a film in which Idris Elba plays the President of the U.S. Sure, prime minister in one film, president in the next, that seems like a no-brainer. BUT, I have a work schedule, and I came home late from the theater on Saturday night, plus I'm scheduled to be back early in the morning to open up for Day 2 of the Videogame Awards. (They put me on this event because, you know, geek stuff, but I don't play any of the new games, the last semi-recent game I played was "Red Dead Redemption" and I didn't make it all the way through...)
All I really wanted to do last night was grab something from the beer fridge, heat up a TV dinner and pass out - but then I'm falling behind, right? So let me flip two films around here, watch the shorter one first so I can get to sleep earlier and increase the chances of waking up tomorrow at 8 am so I can be out the door by 8:30 and at the theater by 10. Both subway lines I need to get there are doing trackwork, so I'll need extra travel time.
So Idris Elba carries over from "Heads of State". I can justify this by saying I wanted to move this film closer to "The Friend" because they're both about dogs, and I can watch the more serious film about a nuclear strike tomorrow, OK? Thank you for understanding. Idris Elba also did a voice in "Zootopia 2", but that film's not streaming yet, and I missed it at the theater. So it might also have made sense to skip "Fixed" today and save it for whenever "Zootopia" is available to me, but I have no guarantee that Mr. Elba would be the link to that film or the link away from it, so better to watch it now, because if not I could be stranding it.
THE PLOT: Bull, an average, all-around good dog, discovers he's going to be neutered in the morning. He realizes he needs one last adventure with his pack of buddies, as these are the last 24 hours with his balls. What could go wrong?
AFTER: This is a one-joke film, I'm sorry - I mean, a number of things happen but they're all centered around one joke, and that is that dogs like to hump things. That's not really even a joke, it's more like just an observation. We all know that male dogs hump people's legs, also other things here, and they like to hump other dogs. That's natural, so how can it even be funny, except for slice-of-life kind of funny? But then if you get the dog neutered, he probably won't do that any more. That's maybe the third best reason to get a dog "fixed", the first being to control the pet population, there are enough dogs on the planet already, and the second best reason is so YOU don't have to deal with their puppies, if you don't want to.
There's this elaborate window-dressing about taking your dog to the vet to get him neutered, but giving him Kool-Aid in the toilet the night before. Umm, I don't think that's a thing, like I hope it's not a thing, and I believe the filmmakers made it up just for this movie. Because what's the point of doing that, you probably DON'T want your dog drinking out of the toilet, and if you really wanted to give him Kool-Aid for some stupid reason, you could just put the Kool-Aid in his water bowl. The toilet is for one thing, and it's not giving sugary beverages to your dog. It's stupid.
Bull decides to run away from home so he can keep his balls, but he encounters a large pack of alley cats, and only escapes because his dog friends come looking for him, and they all escape the cats' territory together. Bull and his fellow "pack" dogs go out for a night on the town, the last night for Bull to use his balls, and they know this because of the Kool-Aid - not from determining that the whole family is kind of grossed out by Bull humping Nana's leg. Eww, it's probably all old and scaly and varicose veiny, but still, dogs be humping things. The pack of dogs goes out to a dog whorehouse, and yeah, I bet you didn't know that was a thing, either. Umm, it's not. Bull's too shy or afraid to approach Honey, the show dog that he's attracted to, so he settles for Molasses, who's a hooker dog. Prostitute dog? Nothing sounds right because there is no such thing. If there were we'd call them a "pound hound" or a "hooker bitch" and those sound even worse. Are there doggie pimps, too, or are they all independent contractors?
This is all just silly or in bad taste or something, this is kind of like the "Sausage Party" of animated dog films, and nobody really needed to see hot dogs getting it on, either, always looking for buns to slide into and such. Well, you know, sometimes a hot dog wants buns and sometimes maybe he just wants to be by himself, but I digress. After Honey catches Bull with his, umm, thingie inside Molasses, the dogs all end up in the pound together, because that's the only place that screenwriters know where stray dogs are made to go. They escape the pound by all peeing at the same time, but that's really not a way to escape from somewhere, and the film never offers up a counter-argument to explain how it is.
One of the dogs, Frankie, goes back to the intersex Doberman he met at the Humphouse, and I'm not sure there are trans dogs or intersex dogs or whatever is seen here. Also not a thing. Honey is scheduled to breed with Sterling, another Borzoi show dog, but let's just say that Bull gets caught in the middle of that. Yeah, it's like that. But after Bull apologizes, Honey confesses that she is in love with him, and they get one night together, and that means despite the attempt to get Bull neutered, he fathered a little of puppies, anyway. Great, so that was all pointless, then. Sterling the show dog soon gets the Kool-Aid treatment, which again, is not a thing - and that also makes no sense because if you had a Borzoi show dog, why would you get it "fixed" and not try to breed the best Borzoi puppies that you could?
Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky (director of "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation")
Also starring the voices of Adam Devine (last seen in "The Out-Laws"), Kathryn Hahn (last heard in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Fred Armisen (last seen in "Dear Mr. Watterson"), Bobby Moynihan (last heard in "Inside Out 2"), Beck Bennett (last heard in "Nimona"), Michelle Buteau (last seen in "Marry Me"), River Gallo, Scott Weil, Aaron LaPlante (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 4: Transformania"), Julie Nathanson (last heard in "Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay"), Michelle Ruff, Kari Wahlgren (last heard in "The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two"), Grey DeLisle (last heard in "Onward"), Sean Chiplock, Lilly Gizelle, Eric Lavvber.
RATING: 4 out of 10 tennis balls
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