There’s a moment in Fixed when Bull, the Staffordshire Terrier voiced with manic sincerity by Adam DeVine, gazes at his testicles and calls them his “hairy, dangling muses.” It’s absurd, grotesque, and weirdly poetic—an emblem of everything Genndy Tartakovsky’s latest animated fever dream dares to be. This is not a film for the faint of heart or the easily scandalized. It’s a raunchy, R-rated howl of masculine panic, rendered in hand-drawn animation that feels like a comic book dipped in sweat and pheromones.
The plot is simple and brutal: Bull learns he’s going to be neutered in the morning. What follows is a last-night-on-earth odyssey through the underbelly of dogdom—a sex club, a squirrel massacre, a failed romantic confession, and a desperate attempt to preserve dignity in a world that’s about to take his balls. It’s The 25th Hour with fleas. It’s Fritz the Cat with more barking. It’s Sausage Party if the sausages had fur and existential dread.
Tartakovsky, known for Samurai Jack and Hotel Transylvania, directs with a kind of feral elegance. The animation is bold, grotesque, and often beautiful in its exaggeration. Dogs stretch, snarl, hump, and cry with a fluidity that feels both cartoonish and disturbingly human. The film’s visual tone owes more to underground graphic novels than mainstream animation—think Crumb, not Pixar.
The voice cast is stacked and mostly in tune with the film’s chaotic heart. DeVine gives Bull a tragicomic edge that elevates the character beyond mere punchline. Idris Elba’s Rocco is all swagger and suppressed tenderness. Kathryn Hahn’s Honey brings a touch of longing and grace to a film otherwise drenched in bodily fluids. River Gallo’s Frankie, the intersex Doberman, is a standout—offering a moment of genuine curiosity and joy amid the madness.
Where Fixed falters is in its pacing and thematic clarity. The film wants to be a meditation on masculinity, mortality, and domesticity—but it often gets distracted by its own vulgarity. The car crash motif, Bull’s obsession with watching them on TV, hints at a deeper yearning for control, for impact, for escape. But the film doesn’t always follow through. The domestic scenes with Nana, voiced by Grey DeLisle, offer glimpses of tenderness, but they’re quickly drowned out by another round of butt jokes.
Still, there’s something oddly moving about Bull’s journey. His fear of castration isn’t just physical—it’s existential. What does it mean to be a man, a dog, a partner, when your agency is stripped away? The film doesn’t answer these questions cleanly, but it asks them with enough sincerity to make the chaos feel earned.
Compared to other adult animated films—Fritz the Cat, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Sausage Party—Fixed lands somewhere in the middle. It’s more emotionally grounded than Sausage Party, less politically sharp than South Park, and less revolutionary than Fritz. But it has its own voice, its own rhythm, its own sweaty poetry.
The car crash theme, Bull’s fixation on destruction, mirrors the film’s own tension between chaos and care. Domesticity is both a comfort and a cage. Masculinity is both a performance and a wound. The film doesn’t resolve these tensions—it dances around them, belly-first, like corn in the wind.
In the end, Fixed is a mixed triumph. It’s crude, uneven, and occasionally exhausting. But it’s also bold, weirdly tender, and unmistakably alive. It may not be a masterpiece, but it’s a howl worth hearing.
Grade: B+. Streaming on Netflix.
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