What I loved about Fixed
28 August 2025
I had thought of a bunch of different witty ways I could introduce this post, but I think I'll just lead with this: I genuinely find it a little funny that this Sony Pictures Animation, Netflix-release movie came out right after K-Pop Demon Hunters had convinced people that Sony Pictures is the current king of animation. Funny because of the way the internet suddenly cringed seeing the trailer, and funny because of how Fixed kind of... proved its own point with the way it was received, in a meta kind of way? I will try to explain what I mean.
Fixed is Sony Pictures's first 2D-animated feature-length movie, led by beloved director Genndy Tartakovsky, whom most people know as "the Samurai Jack guy" but I am more fond of remembering for his work in the more recent Hotel Transylvania saga and Primal series. It is an R-rated movie where the characters are cartoon dogs, some cartoon cats, and occasionally, some cartoon testicles, and which main plot and action involves, amongst other things, rampant sex, drug use, violence, general grossness, and foul language. The trailer does an excellent job at telling you this. It is also a funny and wholesome romance story that shows male, female and intersex characters in an honest, respectful light, with colorful and varied personalities, and which presents a main message and commentary that I believe is very relevant to today's increasingly puritanical society. This is the kind of stuff that you'll need to watch the movie to see.
It is important to acknowledge both things, and this movie is both things. If you cannot take the sight of gross cartoon sex or gross cartoon balls, this is not the movie for you. That doesn't make the movie bad, it just makes it gross. There's an important difference. But there is also a point and a message that Fixed is presenting with this grossness as its medium: that "masculinity" is a ridiculous concept born from insecurity, and which makes you a douche; that "purity" is not only boring and completely unrealistic, but also erases everything that makes you an individual; that no matter how much of a gross little freak you are, you CAN find your people, you CAN accept yourself and be happy.
I can't help but wonder what it is about adult cartoons that off-puts people so much. Because it definitely has to do with the fact that they're cartoons; nobody bats an eye when an R-rated live action romcom about a group of buddies' raunchy trip to Las Vegas comes out, but when it's cartoons, all of a sudden it's a scandal, and everybody has an opinion. At this point we certainly have enough examples of adult cartoons that it shouldn't be a weird concept to anyone. Just don't let your kids watch it. Maybe it's because animation is so universally liked that it has a much wider audience. Maybe it's because animation takes so much work and dedication to make, that it's hard for people to imagine someone may want to use that time and effort to make gross stuff (in which case, many people haven't gone deep enough into the internet...). Maybe, and this is possibly my most interesting theory, it has to do with how animation offers endless possibility. Animation is pure, undistilled fantasy. It can immerse you into an entirely new world, and it can enhance beauty, but it can also enhance and bring focus to all the freaky stuff we have and do. It has the potential to make you cringe in ways you didn't know you could (for the record, no penises or other sexual organs are shown in this movie; just hanging balls, hanging tits, and buttholes, if that helps). The point is, if animation can make beautiful stuff look even more beautiful, the opposite also applies: nasty stuff can look even nastier. I think I will call this theory "The Sausage Party Effect". If you know, you know.
Personally, I have to say that I really liked this movie. I think this may be something that's true for every movie I ever watch, but the more I think about it, and review it in my mind, and the more I write about it, the more things I find to love about Fixed.
This review includes spoilers that I've hidden, so if you have interest in watching the movie, go ahead and watch it. If you want to read the more spoilery stuff, then click to reveal it!
For starters, in spite of everything I said earlier, the animation is really really good, and has a unique appeal, especially when it comes to the exaggerated facial expressions, together with the very exaggerated designs and body proportions of the characters. I would say that the character animation is stellar in this movie, and well worth the time it took to make. After my watch, I found myself going back again to the casual conversational scenes between characters, just to see the little movements of their bristling fur, and subtle head bobbing, and fluid and fun walk/run cycles.
As I also pointed out earlier, I loved the variety of characters and personalities, especially within Bull's group of close friends. They're all supposed to be freaks, but each one's different in their own way. Fetch behaves more like a human than a dog, and as such he's always walking around on two legs, wearing little clothes and throwing social media vocabulary around. Lucky will happily eat and smell anything that comes close enough to his snout. My absolute favorite, though, was the really scary boxer Rocco, who is in fact not only the most sensible and notably decent guy of the group, but also sensitive and mushy, without having to make him downright feminine in mannerisms/behavior. He's just a completely genuine guy you may know in real life. In fact, all of the characters really feel like genuine people you may know in real life.
I love love LOOOVE the casual banter between Bull and Honey. From point one you can tell how close they are as friends by their casual intimacy, contrasted with Bull's sudden awkwardness and insecurity when the conversation seems to get too serious between them. Their interactions manage to be both very cute and very humorous. They also show how Honey's more un-ladylike traits are actually the reasons Bull loves her, and Bull's cuter, more genuine and heartfelt traits are the reasons Honey loves him.
To be honest, I love that sex is talked about so casually. I don't know if it is my getting older, my growing fondness for Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss, or the influence of my very correct friends' takes on nsfw literature, but I really like seeing the lines between friendship, sex and romance get a little messy and play around with each other. It creates a beautiful array of colors of relationships.
They are also approaching sex work, and sex workers, with openminded and respectful writing. Of course, it's a comedy, and they're dogs going to a "Humphouse" in order to heal Bull's broken heart (something he was trying to refuse the whole time), so of course it's a comedic scene, but the laughs and cringe-ness are never on the sex workers themselves, but on the inherent weirdness of sex. In just a couple minutes of screentime, the two sex workers they focus on are shown as human (even though they're dogs- you get what I mean) professionals doing a service for clients, and having their own inner lives, just like any other character.
I really like dogs as the main cast for the message of this movie; because dogs, like all domestic animals, are weird creatures living in a limbo between being instinctual animals and being designer companions, and that's a duality that this movie exploits fairly well in my opinion. There's an additional layer of commentary regarding how humans view and treat dogs that has to do with this duality. We love dogs because we designed them to appeal to us, and there are parts of what a dog is (like their balls) which we find... inconvenient, and will get rid of without a second thought. Domestic animals usually thrive in their domesticity, and this is also a recurring statement during the movie, but that lifestyle itself makes them freaks of the animal kingdom, which is also acknowledged.
I like that the very average protagonist dog gets so influenced vicariously by "show dog" ideals of lineage and worth, due to his close friendship with show-dog Honey, and that it makes him feel inferior in ways his group of buddies don't understand. I like the way it's tied into a neat little arc where Bull's "manhood" becomes the vessel for his insecurities, and that, not only does he realize in the end that life "with balls" is more trouble than it is worth, but also that this obsession has only driven away the dogs (and people) he loves the most, and overshadowed the most loveable parts of himself, making him act just like infamous douchebag Sterling.
I really, really like that, in spite of being the "love interest" and having much less time on screen, Honey gets to have her own arc that's completely parallel to Bull's, and for which she's got full agency and merit. As the audience, we don't get to see all the work and discipline and mental hardship it took her to be a model borzoi, or the kind of philosophy and expectations it put on her, or all the times she's had to quietly suffer (or brush off) Sterling's comments and advances for the sake of being "dog royalty". Except... we do see all of that. Maybe not from her own perspective, but the narrative will constantly let us know. We see how the show dogs regularly struggle, and get confirmation that, for Honey, it's been pretty much the same. We know from Bull's comments and his take on show business that this is something Honey truly and seriously dedicates herself to, but also thinks casually enough about it that she can see the humor in it, and the ways she might not completely fit in that world. For Honey, it takes her actually being in the show, and winning, and experiencing the emptiness of the prize and the comparatively catastrophic reactions of her competitors, to finally realize she doesn't want any of it anymore. Bull doesn't step into her character arc in any way other than being her love interest. He is never the one going "I will show Honey that Sterling is a douche and open her eyes to the truth". No. It is Honey herself living her own life and making her own decisions. I also love the way her arc parallels Bull's with a more feminine take on the "embrace your weirdness" message.
I love that Frankie is there, and I love that they're voiced by an actual intersex person, and I love that Lucky and them are the ones who get to present the movie's thesis to the audience. It just feels right somehow. I get very tickled whenever a secondary character, or something in the environment, is sneaked into the narrative in order to help deliver the story's meaning, instead of it just being the main characters. To me, it feels holistic, like the story is enveloping the entire world, like a wink from the world's creators.
Finally, I'd like to talk about the ending, because I think that it's the kind of scene that many people would go "eugh, disturbing, unnecessary, gross", but that actually, for this kind of movie, is sort of brilliant. Personally, I love it when the story's "villain" or antagonistic force is "defeated" in ways that visually convey the main character's emotional journey. Not only does this ending achieve exactly that, but it does so with the exact kind of ludicrous, gross and sexual humor that the movie as a whole is characterized by, and it says SO much about how incredibly far Bull has gone as a character. Like, seriously, think about it. We had a dog who was obsessed with the thought of losing his balls, which fostered most of his horny and violent behaviors, which he considered his only good trait, his manhood; had him go on a journey of self-discovery and realize that being "led" by his balls is detrimental to him, and that all he needs is actually to be honest with himself and admit he's sensitive and awkward and deeply in love with his best friend; and finally we had the Big Douche, the Big Bad, get within seconds of mating with said friend (whom we know is absolutely dreading this moment). Bull really loves her, he wants to spare her the terrible experience, of course. So, how are we going to resolve this in a way that shows ultimate change and acceptance for Bull? Do we make Bull violently maim Sterling? No, of course not, he's moved past that. He's moved past all of those ideals and behaviors of being alpha dog and testosterone-filled, and dominating the park. He's awkward, and sensitive, and REALLY REALLY loves Honey, and Sterling is within SECONDS of doing the thing to her. So, how do we resolve it? He takes it himself. He takes the Big D (D for Douche) himself, in order to spare Honey the entire ordeal. And it is just... Boy, my jaw was on the floor. While Sterling is humping him, he confesses his love to her. And the best part of this is that Bull's friends, even though they're rightfully horrified, welcome him back as a HERO and shower him with praise. Bull's sacrifice isn't some male power fantasy, it's literally putting himself in the female's place and suffering the same thing she would have. It is absolutely wild, and it is absolutely everything, and I laughed like a maniac. It was perfect for this movie, I'm serious. Perfect.
Because of the obvious shock of the situation, Honey doesn't get a chance to reply to him immediately, but she gets to do it in her own terms later, when all is well and they can be truly intimate with each other. That scene is so sugary sweet and so wholesome. When Bull opens up about his own insecurities regarding losing his balls, Honey's reply is that "You are you in spite of those, not because of them", which I think is an absolutelly stellar response. Honey really, really loves him. If he has no choice but to get his balls cut off, then she's gonna make sure to let him know she's not gonna miss them.
With this, I think all of my thoughts about the movie have been shared.
This is true for pretty much every movie I watch, and it will be true for every one of my reviews: I love storytelling, and I love animation, and I love to see all the new things people can come up with, whether I would have done it differently or not, why some stuff works or not, and how. I am not concerned with giving movies a "score", because I wouldn't know how that would work, or what I could even compare it with. Each creation is an entirely different thing. What even is the criterium? What I am concerned with is picking stories apart to find out how and why they got made, and what the stories are trying to offer me. After giving this movie some thought, yeah, I can understand why Genndy might have wanted to make it for such a long time. As far as I'm concerned, it's well-made, well thought out, and enjoyable. And naaasty. And hilarious. Kudos!
