Review: Fixed has no bark, and it certainly bites

When I review a movie, I try to be as kind as I can be, as gentle as possible. Making a movie is a lot of work. So many people put so much time and effort into it. It's a herculean effort, almost a miracle, to get something made. Even if I dislike a movie (or hate it), I try to find some nice things to say. With Fixed, the latest from Genndy Tartakovsky and Sony Pictures Animation, this might prove a challenge.

Fixed was in release purgatory for a while. It was originally slated to come out in 2023, but that obviously didn't materialize. I imagine that Sony realized they had a tricky sell on their hands. This was never going to do much business theatrically. So it makes sense that it ended up as one of the Sony movies that releases on Netflix. After watching it, though, I'm like...did this movie need to get released? Will anyone's life be better for having watched this? Maybe this is the rare movie that would've been better left on the shelf, where people could have pined for it and wondered about it, without ever finding out how god-awful it is.

I'm a dog person. I have an Italian greyhound named Banjo who is a little angel. Of course, my husband and I imagine what Banjo is thinking at all times. We provide a voice for him, color the world with his commentary. I think all dog owners do this. In Fixed, we get to hear what dogs are thinking and saying, and if it's at all on-the-mark, I'm so fucking glad we can't understand our dogs. The way they're presented here is insufferably one-note.

Bull is a two-year-old mutt whose best assets are his balls. In a world where most of his friends have been fixed, he counts himself lucky to still have his family jewels. They fuel many of his waking moments, especially when Nana is around. He has a torrid ongoing affair with Nana's leg. You can often find him going to town on it, and if the rest of the family catches him, there's not much to be done. They can chase him away, but that just means he's going to start humping whatever else he lands on or near. Bull might be blue, but god forbid his balls are.

After a particularly destructive humping spree, Bull finds out he's going to be neutered. The ultimate betrayal. So he decides to run away and run wild, leaving the suburbs behind and venturing into Chicago (a purely incidental setting -- there's not anything particularly Chicago about this movie's ongoings) to sow his wild oats. He's joined by some of his best friends from the dog park, and crosses paths a couple times with his beloved neighbor, a show dog named Honey (voiced by Kathryn Hahn, a standout of the star-studded voice cast), who has an important dog show that very night. La di da.

This is, essentially, one of those "last hurrah" R-rated comedies but in animated form, and about dogs. A decent enough equation, I think. The problem is, this movie just isn't funny. Or I should say it is extremely rarely funny. There were a few beats that made me laugh. Weirdly, when it gets away from the sex stuff and instead injects some bouts of blood and violence, it got some good laughs out of me. Maybe just because it was a relief to have different material than the repetitive dick and asshole jokes that make up most of the runtime. There's also a sequence set in a dog brothel (yeah) that has some funny gags, and also an intersex character. #representation

Sure, I knew what I was in for when I started this. The lowest-common-denominator humor is part of watching something like this. That's all fine, and I can't penalize Fixed too much for leaning into the very thing it's setting out to do. The bigger issue is that so much of this feels like a first draft written by middle schoolers. It's like watching The Secret Life of Pets, where there is nothing insightful or interesting or new being said about the animals we're watching. Yeah, dogs sometimes eat poop, and love chasing balls, and owners and dogs sometimes look alike. Almost every joke in here is one we've heard a hundred times before, often told with more originality and wit. I kept wondering why Tartakovsky wanted to make this movie, what he was hoping to say or impart. It feels like nothing, just a chance to make a bunch of unfunny off-color jokes set in a canine world. (It also doesn't help that the similarly-conceived Strays already did R-rated dog comedy much better, albeit in live-action form.)

I'm sure there's an audience for this, and they'll find it on Netflix. It seems likely to be a favorite of middle school boys, since, yeah, it feels like it was plucked from their brains. But if I, a dog lover who runs an animation blog, could find so little to like here, I wonder how bright Fixed's prospects could possibly be.

Fixed hits Netflix on August 13.