Netflix’s ‘Fixed’: An Unflinching Look at Canine Crisis and Hand-Drawn Rebellion

In the landscape of contemporary American animation, a field largely domesticated by four-quadrant family entertainment, Genndy Tartakovsky’s Fixed arrives as a startling and feral proposition. The film presents a deceptively simple, high-concept premise: Bull, an average, all-around good dog, discovers he has 24 hours until he is scheduled to be neutered. This inciting incident triggers a frenetic, last-ditch adventure with his pack of canine friends, structured as a wild-night-out escapade. Yet, beneath its R-rated, comedy-of-humiliation surface lies a work of surprising thematic density. The narrative is less about a dog’s carnal panic and more a profound existential crisis. Tartakovsky himself has framed Bull’s anxiety through a potent analogy to the biblical tale of Samson, whose strength was inextricably linked to his hair; for Bull, his testicles represent a similar locus of identity, a source of what he perceives as his essential self. Their impending loss is not just a physical threat but a cataclysmic challenge to his very being. The film operates on a principle of radical tonal synthesis, a quality a character within the film’s own diegesis describes as “sweet and horrific, all at the same time”. It is a work that intentionally fuses the grotesque with the heartfelt, arguing that emotional depth is found not by sanitizing life’s messy realities, but by confronting them in all their crude, vulnerable, and often hilarious complexity.

A Visionary’s Hand-Drawn Rebellion

The film’s most definitive statement is articulated not through its dialogue but through its very form. As the first-ever traditionally animated feature from Sony Pictures Animation, a studio synonymous with computer-generated blockbusters, Fixed is an aesthetic and industrial anomaly—a self-proclaimed “unicorn”. The animation, a collaboration with the specialists at Renegade Animation and Brazil’s Lightstar Studios, is a masterclass in the expressive potential of a medium many considered a lost art in mainstream American features. Tartakovsky, an auteur whose singular style has shaped modern animation through works like Dexter’s Laboratory and Primal, eschews the slick veneer of contemporary CG. Instead, he embraces a visual language that is tactile, exaggerated, and unapologetically “cartoony,” reminiscent of a more adult The Ren & Stimpy Show. The film’s artistic lineage is a deliberate pastiche, channeling the kinetic, slapstick physicality of masters like Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. This approach allows for eye-bugging, face-stretching reactions that would appear grotesque if rendered with photorealistic precision; early 3D mock-ups were deemed “too much” for this very reason. Tartakovsky deliberately avoided the “extreme-ification” common in modern kids’ animation, focusing instead on classic principles of timing and clean staging. His process, inspired by anime directors, involved personally creating thumbnail storyboards to provide a clear blueprint for his global team. The choice of 2D animation, therefore, is not merely stylistic but ideological. The medium becomes the message, its “scrappy,” hand-drawn quality the perfect formal expression for a story about authenticity versus manufactured perfection.

Fixed

The Uncomfortable Synthesis of Vulgarity and Vulnerability

Fixed is relentless in its commitment to its R-rated premise, deploying a barrage of lewd and scatological humor that has proven polarizing. While some critics have found the dialogue wanting, feeling at times like gags from a “wrinkled back issue of National Lampoon,” the film’s physical comedy is consistently praised as its strongest asset. This vulgarity, which Tartakovsky describes as “raunchy, but… not gross,” serves as the disquieting foundation for a surprisingly substantial emotional core. Unlike films such as Sausage Party, which lean heavily on shock value, Fixed grounds its humor in character. The central romance between Bull and his neighbor, the elegant show dog Honey, is rendered with genuine warmth, and the narrative explores themes of friendship and acceptance with a sincerity that is both disarming and, for some, dissonant. This emotional sincerity is deepened by a sharp critique of the elitism of the competitive dog show world and a notably tender and progressive storyline involving Frankie, an intersex Doberman voiced by River Gallo, which directly addresses themes of self-acceptance. The film’s most outrageous climactic sequence, a set piece the director called a non-negotiable “litmus test,” functions as the thesis for this artistic experiment. It is here that the narrative’s most base humor is used as the direct mechanism for delivering its most significant thematic payoff: character catharsis and a final, hard-won atonement. The film’s success hinges on whether one accepts that the profane can be a direct pathway to the profound.

The Chemistry of the Canine Ensemble

The emotional architecture of the film is held together by the palpable chemistry of its central pack, whose camaraderie provides the necessary anchor for the narrative’s more extreme comedic flights. The ensemble is led by Adam DeVine as Bull, a character he has described feeling “born to play,” capturing the dog’s pent-up anxiety and underlying sweetness. Idris Elba delivers a standout performance as Rocco, a self-assured boxer whose tough exterior conceals a sensitive soul, deconstructing tropes of stoic masculinity. Kathryn Hahn’s Honey is a crucial element in the film’s tonal balance. At the actress’s own suggestion, the character was written to be as raunchy and crude as her male counterparts, a choice that infuses the film with a vital feminine energy and prevents Honey from becoming a passive romantic prize. Instead, she actively participates in and subverts the film’s transgressive humor while simultaneously questioning the very standards of perfection that define her existence. The supporting pack, including Bobby Moynihan’s neurotic beagle Lucky, Fred Armisen’s influencer-obsessed dachshund Fetch, and Beck Bennett’s arrogant Borzoi antagonist Sterling, are more than comedic foils; they are archetypal probes into the film’s themes of identity and conformity. The warm dynamic of the group, based on Tartakovsky’s own long-standing friendships, ensures that even amidst the chaos, the film’s emotional core remains intact.

The Survival of a Hollywood Unicorn

The story of the film’s creation is a compelling meta-narrative that mirrors its on-screen themes. A passion project first conceived in 2009, Fixed languished in development for over a decade, repeatedly put on the back burner at Sony while Tartakovsky helmed the studio’s billion-dollar Hotel Transylvania franchise. When finally completed, the film faced a near-fatal distribution crisis. Originally a co-production to be released by Warner Bros. through New Line Cinema, the finished movie was unceremoniously dropped as part of a wider corporate cost-saving strategy. For a time, the film, which Tartakovsky describes as a “unicorn” for being original, R-rated, and 2D, was a completed work without a home. Its eventual rescue came from an unlikely corner: after being passed over by Netflix’s film division, which prioritizes family-friendly content, it was championed and acquired by the streamer’s adult animation series division. This journey, a protracted struggle against institutional and commercial aversion to risk, parallels Bull’s own story of a lovable mutt fighting for his place in a world of pedigreed purebreds. The film’s very existence is a testament to artistic persistence in a system that rarely rewards it.

The film held its world premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and was released globally on Netflix on August 13, 2025.