One of the first things you’ll see in Fixed (now on Netflix) is the little pink starfish under a dog’s tail. Consider that a content warning for this very adult animated feature about a pooch enjoying his final night of, uh, hanging loose before he gets neutered. You know, fixed. Snipped. And since the movie just comes out and says things, I’ll come out and say it: He’s having his testicles removed, as many dogs do. The nut here (sorry) is Genndy Tartakovsky, the neo-master of animation behind wonderful series such as Samurai Jack, Primal, Dexter’s Laboratory, and Star Wars: Clone Wars (note: the 2D 2003 shorts, not the CG series that launched in 2008), and who made big money directing three hit Hotel Transylvania movies. Fixed is a long-in-the-works project that nearly got dumpster’d by Warner Bros. (see also: Batgirl, Coyote vs. Acme) before Sony’s animation arm and Netflix picked it up like a dog owner to a fresh dookie on the sidewalk. Which is unfortunately an apt metaphor for the movie.
The Gist: Once upon a time, Bull (Adam DeVine) was a sweet adorable little puppy. Two years later, he looks like “a grocery bag full of potatoes” and lives in Hump City. His main target is Nana’s leg, but he’ll settle for whatever inanimate object is convenient – a houseplant, a bowl of mint chocolate chip, he’s not picky. But his true true yearning is Honey (Kathryn Hahn), the Afghan hound next door who he’s known since they were pups. She’s kinda friendzoning him but kinda not, although the big reason he hasn’t propositioned her is, he’s a goofy-looking mutt and she’s a pampered prize showdog. One of these days, Bull. One of these days.
Bull has reason to be confident in himself, though: Unlike most dogs, he still has his balls, and he struts them. He hangs in a pack with his best buds, a burly boxer named Rocco (Idris Elba), a rampant turd-muncher named Lucky (Bobby Moynihan) and a social media influencer dachshund in human clothes named Fetch (Fred Armisen). Bull learns things during buttsniffing exercises at the dog park, like how arrogant egotistical douchenozzle dog Sterling (Beck Bennett) plans to breed Honey after they both win the dog show, and of course that rankles our humble protagonist. He also learns the pre-neutering ritual involves spoiling a dog with whatever he wants – including a toilet bowl full of Kool-Aid – the night before the deed is done.
So it’s with great dread that Bull eyes the porcelain bowl full of red sugar-water. The fam has grown weary of his randiness. His time has come. He’ll have to say goodbye to Old Spice and Napoleon. No, really. He named them, and imagines their great adventures together. Not that he’s ready to go through with it, though. And so Bull squeezes through the fence and runs away to the city, where he meets up with Lucky, Rocco and Fetch for one last hurrah, which may include losing his virginity, because at this point he’s mounted pretty much everything save for a female dog. Ribald hijinks ensue!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I guess Fritz the Cat has a proper foil now? Otherwise, Strays featured most of these jokes two years ago, albeit without the The Last Detail-type final-hurrah plot.
Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Admittedly, there’s something funny about Idris Elba delivering verbal uberfilth that’ll wilt the houseplants.
Memorable Dialogue: A prime example of this movie’s level of sophistication: “We’re gonna go out there and suck all the fun out of those balls before you lose them!” – Rocco
Sex and Skin: Well, it’s rated R “for strong crude sexual content and language throughout” – all involving animated dogs.
Our Take: What made early-years Ren and Stimpy genius-level subversive fun was how it danced around crudity with juvenile naughtiness and exquisitely calculated innuendo. It edged up to the line of good taste and sporadically dared to just barely cross it, giving us a snickery that-shouldn’t-be-on-Nickelodeon thrill. In contrast, Fixed just dives headlong into the filth heap and roots around, pulling out one gross thing after another and taking it for laps around the yard, like a dog with a half-eaten possum in its mouth. It’s about as subtle as a landfill in your living room, and that’s its goal, for better or worse, mostly worse.
There’s plenty of Ren and Stimpy in the overall look and character design of Fixed, which is rendered lovingly in Tartakovsky’s preferred 2D animation. The filmmaker is gifted in the art of visual storytelling – somewhat famously, Primal and Samurai Jack were nearly dialogue-free – which makes Fixed’s barrage of verbal bawdiness a method that doesn’t align with Tartakovsky’s strengths. So it’s no surprise that the script desperately begs for laughs that never arrive, although I confess that a snicker might have squeaked out unceremoniously at the image of an anthropomorphic dog testicle wearing a French bicorn hat. I’m not a robot, you know.
But there isn’t much more to Fixed than genital- and bodily-fluid-based comedy, which is flung everywhere as a literal horndog and his pals take a quasi-Cassavetes’ Husbands brand of predictably untethered masculine adventure: They get a contact buzz, knock over a hot dog cart, liberate one of those designer purse-pups, sow chaos at a dog show, dodge animal control agents, stumble across a dog orgy, etc. Tartakovsky and co-writer Jon Vitti (whose credits range from all-timer episodes of The Simpsons to Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel) try tapping into the emotional fodder of Bull’s identity crisis as he learns that a man- er, a dog is much more than just what’s dangling between his hind legs. That’s not nothing, but this smidgen of substance struggles to find elbow room amidst the unfettered and unfunny big dumb obvious jokes, which only strengthen the argument that limitations often make art better.
Our Call: Fixed roams free off the leash when it needs to be fenced in. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.