Genndy Tartakovsky’s Gross, Hyper-sexual Netflix Movie ‘Fixed’ Is Proof That Great Artists Are Often Very, Very Weird

If the YouTube comments on the Fixed trailer are to be believed, fans of the renowned animator Genndy Tartakovsky—known for creating Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Hotel Transylvania, Primal, and more—aren’t willing to get on board with his R-rated comedy about dog sex.

“This shows that even legends like Genndy Tartakovsky can have their downsides,” one commenter wrote. (Over 300 others upvoted this comment with a “thumbs up”.)

“Genndy has had the idea for this movie since 2009, you’d think after 16 years he’d have taken the hint that this isn’t a good idea,” quipped another, with over 1,500 upvotes.

And, one of the most popular comments, with over 8,000 upvotes: “this is it ladies and gentleman [sic] the man who created Primal and Samurai Jack….”

The trailer for Fixed—which began streaming on Netflix today—depicts one of the first scenes in the movie, which finds a horny bulldog named Bull (voiced by Adam DeVine) humping the leg of his sleeping owner, Nana, desperate to get off. This is complete with wanton moans from DeVine, multiple angles showing Bull’s pink butthole, and the unmistakable rhythmic skin-slapping sound of sex. It gets worse: When Nana shakes Bull off her legs and reaches for her glasses, she instead grabs Bull’s exposed penis.

Like the YouTube commenters, I had an immediate, visceral, negative reaction to this sequence. (It didn’t help that I started watching my screener on my lunch break, and quickly lost my appetite.) If you’re hoping that trailer is as bad as it gets, think again—in addition to gorgeous 2D animation and a sweet love story, Fixed goes all in on the horny-dog-sex motif. Two of the movie’s big emotional conversations happen while Bull is actively having sex with another dog. There’s a fantasy sequence involving Bull frolicking with his two wrinkled, pink, anthropomorphic detached balls. It is, quite simply, gross.

Disgust is a powerful thing. It was enough to cloud my enjoyment of the film, and, it seems, will likely be enough to prevent some of Tartakovsky’s longtime fans from watching Fixed at all. But the movie also exposes an interesting, uncomfortable truth: A lot of great artists are a lot weirder than mainstream audiences want them to be.

Fixed is Tartakovsky’s passion project of over 15 years. As he explained in his director’s statement, he first pitched the idea of an adult-animated comedy to Sony Pictures Animation in 2010. Tartakovsky wanted to make a movie based on the personalities of his high school friends. When Sony asked for a stronger hook, Tartakovsky came back with the idea of a dog who finds out he will be neutered the next morning. The project was put on hold for years, but was finally picked up by New Line Cinema in 2019, set to be released by New Line’s parent company, Warner Bros.

“We were all set to make an original 2D, rated R, fully animated movie, truly a unicorn,” Tartakovsky wrote. “We hired some of the best 2D animators from around the world and with a small but mighty crew we started production.” In 2024, Warner Bros. dropped the movie from its release list, despite Tartakovsky’s longtime deal with Warner Bros. Animation.

Netflix, ultimately, saved the movie from being shelved for good. In his director’s statement, Tartakovsky cites leadership changes as a big reason for the film’s delay, while WBD blamed cost-cutting as the reason the studio dropped the film. But it’s hard to imagine that the explicit content of the film didn’t play into it’s struggle to see the light of day.

Tartatakovsky has said that he had to fight to keep the movie as raunchy as it is—like keeping the shots of Bull’s testicles in the film—and even had to tone down some aspects—like the style of the dog’s anuses.

“After our first test screening, we had a very serious discussion about it,” Tartakovsky said in a recent interview with Polygon. “Our butthole is just a circle with a little X in it, or an asterisk, not drawn like a disgusting anus or anything. It’s like in real life, where the dog’s tails are up and you see the butt. So we colored them a bit more subtly, so you wouldn’t have a dark butthole on a white dog.”

And that sexually explicit climax (pun intended), where Bull throws his body into the line of fire, and confesses his love to Honey while getting railed in the butt by Sterling? That was part of Tartakovsky original vision.

“This sequence was in my very first pitch in 2010,” Tartakovsky told Collider in a separate interview. “I acted it out and everything. I said in my head, ‘Whoever understands what the sequence is truly about gets this movie,’ because everybody wanted to change it or omit it, and I would say, ‘No. This is the one sequence in the movie that stands still.’”

In other words, don’t blame Hollywood for sexing up Fixed. This movie is exactly as raunchy—or indeed, not even quite as raunchy—as Tartakovsky wanted it to be. Longtime fans of the animator simply have to come to terms with the fact that their childhood hero—the one responsible for innocent children’s entertainment like Dexter’s Lab, Samurai Jack, and Hotel Translyvania— dedicated over a decade of his life to a movie about dog dick.

But if we’re going to put artists on a pedestal, we have to be prepared for them to be weird like that. That’s what makes them interesting, creative, and compelling enough to create art that entertains us. You think normies like us—who would rather never think about dogs having sex, ever—could keep you engaged in a story? No way. Only weirdos have that power. Sickos, even.

Maybe Fixed isn’t for you. Maybe, like me, you found the film juvenile at best, and disgusting at worst. We’d both do well to remember that disgust—while powerful—has never been a reliable indicator of morality. I think watching an animated dog dry hump mint ice cream is gross. That doesn’t mean I think it’s unethical. We just have to accept that, as a byproduct of their weirdness, sometimes great artists insist on animating dogs having intercourse. That doesn’t make them any less great.