[Chuck Zlotnick/Universal Picture – © Universal Studios]

STRAYS
Directed by Josh Greenbaum
Certificate: 15
☆☆

THE comic power of a well-placed swear word is an important tool in a film writer’s tool box, and the vast majority of such words have longevity – the best-known curses (clue: they are generally of a sexual nature) have Anglo-Saxon origins and have remained remarkably unchanged for centuries.

As well as a jokey jolt to any character’s speech, swear words and how they are applied can also define the character itself. Think Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.

Strays, one of those strange kidult films – on the same shelf as Mark Wahlberg’s Ted and a genre well-rounded adults might be expected to have grown out of by their 18th birthday – combines fruity language to make the audience giggle uncomfortably and also to shape the street-savvy lead of Bug (Jamie Foxx).

Such is the neverending torrent of effing and blinding, tumbling out in one long beep of a sentence, each curse zooming after the last one to have left his hairy chops, the power of a funny looking dog turning the air blue stretches thin over 90 minutes.

Reggie (Will Ferrell) is a scruffbag of a Border Terrier whose owner hates him.

Reggie thinks life is a game where Doug (Will Forte) takes him a long way from home, bungs him out of the pick-up truck and scoots off smartish.

Of course this naïve canine is going to see the light – and his guide comes in the form of a Boston Terrier called Bug, whose foul mouth is his rat-a-tat way of expressing his deep antipathy towards the human world.

Bug is a stray and proud of it, he thinks owners are for stupid dogs and true freedom is being no one’s pet.

Bug’s influence soon smartens up Reggie’s lack of streetwise woof-woof and he begins to see what his relationship with Doug was really about.

This double act soon becomes a pack when well-groomed Aussie sheep dog Maggie (Isla Fisher) pops up – she has been usurped in her owner’s affections by a toy poodle and a Great Dane called Hunter who has a job as a comfort dog in a hospice. They set out to wreak a terrible revenge on Reggie’s awful owner.

The four dogs have chemistry and the banter between them offers the opportunity for giggles.

But the endless jokes that focus mainly on poo and dogs humping random objects fall flat as soon as the story is let off the lead.