‘Fixed' Review: From the Mind of Genndy Tartakovsky Comes a Comedy About a Horndog With a Castration Complex

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Next time someone tells you animation is for kids, consider offering 'Fixed' as clear evidence to the contrary. Crude in both senses of the term — from its raunchy humor to the deliberately un-slick animation style — Genndy Tartakovsky's R-rated feature is to 'Lady and the Tramp' as 'Shaving Ryan's Privates' is to a respected Spielberg movie. Produced by Sony Pictures Animation and dropping on Netflix, where it should be right at home with the likes of 'BoJack Horseman' and 'Big Mouth,' the off-color comedy focuses on how a randy rescue mutt (Adam Devine as Bull) reacts to the news he's about to be neutered.
Bull has balls (which are lovingly drawn beneath his asterisk-shaped keister), but not for long. That is, unless he can figure out some way to outwit his owners, who've done little to domesticate their beloved if misbehaved companion since the day they adopted him. 'Fixed' starts out irreverent — with a scene of Bull moaning in ecstasy as he mounts Nana's leg — and gets increasingly brazen as it goes along, which is no easy feat for gutter humor to sustain.
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Most shock comedies peter out after the first few gags, whereas 'Fixed' rivals 'Pink Flamingoes' in its ever-escalating capacity to offend — and doesn't stop at eating doggy doo either. By the end, Bull's willing to risk his asterisk to protect Honey (Kathryn Hahn), the purebred Afghan hound who lives next door. A fence separates the two neighbors, but there's obvious chemistry between them, even if Bull believes Honey's out of his league — and it's easy to see why, since Honey's a prize-winning show dog destined to be mated with the stuck-up Sterling (Beck Bennett).
So the toon's cheeky plot goes something like this: Early on, Bull feels superior to all the neutered animals at the dog park because he's still got his gonads. He loves Honey, but doubts he'll be able to do anything about it before the vet gets to snipping. So Bull runs away from home, enjoying the canine equivalent of an Amish Rumspringa, only to realize he might not be cut out for freedom after all.
Frankly, that premise is little more than the setup for the sort of jokes that feel 'wrong' — in all the right ways — to find in an animated feature. Nana mistakes Bull's excitement for her lipstick? Check. Lucky the Chihuahua (Bobby Moynihan) snacks on cat scraps? Check. There's even a hallucinatory pot-induced scene where Bull's dangling duo (whom he names Old Spice and Napoleon) declare their independence and set off on their own.
Sacrificing good taste in pursuit of the higher goal — which could be described as joining 'Fritz the Cat' in animated infamy — Tartakovsky and co-writer Jon Vitti (a veteran of 'Saturday Night Live' and 'The Simpsons') make no apologies for the project's obscene sense of humor. Compare that to classic Tex Avery and Roger Rabbit shorts, which looked kid-friendly but were full of adult-skewing sexual innuendo, and you've got a movie that's not only comfortable being outrageous, but fairly original in how it goes about it (a vast improvement over 2023's live-action 'Strays').
In genre terms, 'Fixed' amounts to a pooch-centric variation on the 'American Pie'-style sex comedy. If you don't count Nana's leg (or the fruit bowls and flowerpots that Bull's been defiling for years), then this oversexed canine is still a virgin. By the time Bull and his friends find a cathouse where he can satisfy his urges, the movie is bone-deep into 'oh no, they didn't' territory. While Lucky gets lucky with a Doberman named Frankie (River Gallo), Bull and his boys, Rocco (Idris Elba) and Fetch (Fred Armisen), explore the kind of cartoon kinks not even Seth Rogen's 'Sausage Party' dared to depict.
Unlikely as it may sound, inside this den of depravity, 'Fixed' finally gets emotional. It wouldn't do to spoil the surprises. Suffice to say, the film proves impressively grown-up about how far Bull must go to atone for his behavior. Turns out you can teach a horndog new tricks.
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