We can admit to ourselves that we love our pet dogs. We love our pet cats and fish and birds, and so on. But we really love our dogs, their companionships, and the comfort. For those of us who don’t have kids, dogs are the closest we will ever get to loving someone else because they return that love unconditionally. Then there are morons like Doug (Will Forte), who abandon their dogs for selfish reasons. Have you ever asked yourself what your dog would think of you if they could share their thoughts? Director Josh Greenbaum and screenwriter Dan Perrault go to the Pound in Strays, now in theaters.

First up, though, is that the film looks cute, and parents might think, “I can drop my kids at the movies; they love movies about dogs. They’ll have a good time.” If your kid is 18 or older, yes, they will absolutely have a blast with Strays. But this story is not for the little tikes. Strays is crude. It is vulgar.

Perrault marks the story’s territory with f-bombs, so much so that it might just be the heaviest use of the word in a single movie.

Keep in mind that the film’s vulgarities are not without purpose. Will Ferrell is the timid voice of Reggie, a gullible Border Terrier with an attachment to Doug, who never wanted him in the first place.

Reggie is scrappy and just wants to be loved. There are two keywords Reggie wants to hear more than anything in the world, and I’ll let you discover them for yourselves. Suffice it to say, because Doug doesn’t want Reggie, they play a game of fetch; only Doug’s intent is that Reggie won’t know his way back home.

I’d say Reggie is brighter than the average dog, but that would be downplaying his resourcefulness, though he is not of the streets when Doug thinks he’s finally abandoned him. Instead, Reggie happens upon a streetwise Boston Terrier, Bug, voiced by Jamie Foxx. When these two dogs come together, they start out as oil and water and quickly realize they need each other more than either is willing to admit. Ferrell and Foxx are hilarious together. Their pack of strays is joined by Isla Fisher’s Maggie, an Australian Shepherd, and a Great Dane named Hunter (Randall Park), a therapy dog.

Perrault’s most obvious tie-in is Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me, though that film’s violence is replaced with a meaningful side story as the pack helps Reggie find his way home, plotting revenge on Doug. Rob Riggle voices Rolf, a police dog, and you can guess where the story goes from there.

I have to hand it to Greenbaum. He really went to the dogs to find animals able to be filmed to get the action he needed to keep the story light and fresh. Some might say that the story is over vulgar. Still, we must remember – earlier this year, Universal delivered Cocaine Bear, so a story about the musings of dogs gone astray with their inner monologue for the taking while planning revenge against selfish humans is not entirely out of the realm of possibilities.

There is no actual story on which Strays is based, unlike Cocaine Bear, keeping Strays as an original story. Fisher and Park are given as much to do in the story as Ferrell and Foxx; the story is a team effort, not because they are strays but because they just want to be loved.

Because of the vulgarities, Strays might be off-putting, and I won’t claim to say that you’d be missing out if you didn’t get up off the couch long enough to experience the heart inherent in the story. We all lose our way, and when we’re defenseless, to begin with . . . . okay, “defenseless” might not entirely be accurate. When we are unable to care for ourselves beyond the basic needs of nosing through dumpsters, rousting the local thugs, and being able to lick our own ends, well, we just need a bit of love to take us to the next level. First-world problems, right?

For a scant 93-minute film, Strays fits the comedic, heartfelt bill it is intended to be. F-bombs included.