“Fixed” Review
Director: Genndy Tartakovsky Screenwriter: Genndy Tartakovsky, Jon Vitti Cast: Adam DeVine, Idris Elba, Kathryn Hahn, Fred Armisen, Beck Bennett, Bobby Moynihan Distributor: Netflix Running Time: 85 min. MPAA: R
Adult animation has changed a lot in the past 20 years. It used to be a big draw that cartoons started slinging profanity, having sex, and letting the poop and piss fly, spanning from the mindless carnage of Happy Tree Friends to the juvenile CGI of Tripping the Rift. It’s why there’s little surprise that Fixed has been an on/off project since the 2000s, finally unleashed in the era of Sony favoring Genndy Tartakovsky’s projects and Netflix willing to broadcast anything. It’s the type of film my college friends and I would’ve giggled at while getting drunk in the 2000s. Time passed, however, and while adult animation grew up, Fixed didn’t.
The premise is simple and built for low-brow cartoon antics expected to carry the entire picture. The anxious and horny terrier Bull (Adam DeVine) can’t stop humping inanimate objects and can’t bring himself to confess his love for his crush, the yellow Borzoi Honey (Kathryn Hahn). Before his stammering around his romantic interest, Bull is shown humping a leg, rubbing his balls on a table, sticking his dick in ice cream, and convincing a grandmother to grab his erect penis, mistaking it for lipstick. Those are decent gross gags, but the film won’t offer much beyond this mindset.
After introducing Bull’s dog peers, which include the stern boxer, Rocco (Idris Elba), and the egotistical Borzoi, Sterling (Beck Bennett), the film introduces the terrifying idea of being neutered. Having enjoyed swinging his balls around human and dog alike, Bull can’t bring himself to let go of the testicles he has dubbed as Old Spice and Napoleon (voiced by Sean Chiplock and Daran Norris). With the big day looming to take away his big balls, he leaves home with his pack to head to the city for one last night of rowdy dog behavior. He humps a lot, eats a lot, brutalizes a squirrel, shits, piss, and aims to direct his boner towards Honey or the next best dog in heat. All of this leads to Bull’s lesson learned of being more than sum of his balls to feel comfortable with himself, an insecurity that is not all that well explored as the film struggles for dog jokes with the most inane dialogue.
I’m sure the abundance of profanity, poop, and penetration will garner this film a comparison to the X-rated Fritz the Cat, harboring similarities for those who never watched that film beyond the pot smoking and absurd levels of exposed anthropomorphic breasts. Ralph Bakshi’s Fritz still had the appeal of criticizing the way white folks engaged in activism and the rebellious spirit of the 1960s. With Fixed, the bulk of the joke revolves around cartoon dogs being vulgar on top of a routine story about Bull confessing his love and coming to terms with his issues. There are some decent subplots of Rocco addressing his mommy issues and the quirky Lucky (Bobby Moynihan) falling in love with an intersex dog, but there isn’t much charm to the chemistry or even clever gags beyond the obvious gags, talking about the intersex Dobermann Frankie (River Gallo) for having a hot dog and a peapod.
But even though it is a vulgar cavalcade of cartoon antics, the film still feels hampered by its failure to go the extra mile with that concept, especially given the exaggerated animation that works well for this material. Consider how the film never wastes an opportunity for a dog to curse at the top of their lungs, but still seems to be playing hide-the-pickle for how much it talks about dog sex. Even the film Strays, another adult dog comedy I didn’t much care for, still had the devotion to show an erect dog penis and cleverness to mock other dog movie tropes. Very little creativity oozes out of this cartoon that never walks the full route of gross-out adult antics or astute dog comedy, spending all of its 85 minutes repeating the same few jokes over and over and over, hoping that one of those sex and pee jokes will land.
Fixed fails to be an adult cartoon for an age where animated vulgarity won’t cut it anymore. With cartoons becoming more mature, especially from Genndy Tartakovsky’s recent works like Primal and Unicorn: Warriors Eternal, this type of animated movie needs to step up its gross-out game, grow a bigger ball sack of cleverness, or be put down. There was always more to adult animation as films like Heavy Traffic, Ghost in the Shell, and Persepolis have proven prior. Even the overtly juvenile Sausage Party had something to say about religion. What does Fixed have to say? Not much, beyond how well Genndy can animate a pair of swinging testicles, a trait not strong enough to carry humor for an entire film.
