The Secret Life of Pets

No one will mistake The Secret Life of Pets for a new animated classic, but it is a lot of fun, is bright and colorful and features a strong voice cast.  It won't necessarily blow anyone away.  The visuals are pretty standard as far as CG animation goes, and the big laughs are basically reserved for the opening half.  Still, the characters grew on me after awhile.  This is a light, breezy kid's film that has enough charm to keep it afloat.

The film follows a group of pets living in a Manhattan apartment building, and the lives they lead when their human owners are away.  Our entry into this world is a dog named Max (voice by Louis C.K.), a pampered canine who lives with his loving human, Katie (Ellie Kemper).  When she goes off to work, Max either sits by the door, wondering where she goes all day, or he hangs out with his other animal friends who also live nearby, such as the neighbor dog Gidget (Jenny Slate, easily stealing the movie with her voice over performance here), or the fat cat who lives upstairs, Chloe (Lake Bell).  Max's perfect world is uprooted when Katie brings home a new dog she found at a shelter - a big, brown slobbery sort named Duke (Eric Stonestreet).  The two are instantly at odds with one another, vying to be the "alpha dog" of the home, and earning Katie's complete love and respect.  This personal war escalates until both of them find themselves lost on the streets without their collars, and being hunted down by animal control.

These early moments depicting the lifestyles of the animals, and their relationship with their humans is easily when the movie is at its best, and honestly, probably would have worked great as an animated short or TV special.  When the main plot kicks in, the movie remains enjoyable, but doesn't seem quite as inspired as the first 20 minutes.  We get your standard chase plot, where Max and Duke find they have to work together to survive on the streets, and stay ahead of a group of abandoned animals led by a cute but very psychotic bunny named Snowball (Kevin Hart).  The pack of abandoned animals have turned their backs on human companionship, since they were all forgotten about at one point, and want to hunt down and destroy our canine heroes because they are "domesticated".  It's okay for a kid's movie, but it still never builds to anything all that great.  What I liked more were the scenes concerning Gidget leading a group of the apartment pets on a quest to find Max (whom she has a crush on) and Duke.  Part of this was because I found Jenny Slate to be absolutely adorable and hilarious as the sweet little dog, while the other part was I liked the ragtag group of pets, including some dogs, a parakeet, a gerbil, and even a falcon, played with a certain level of New York sarcasm by Albert Brooks. 

The clear inspiration behind The Secret Life of Pets is how the screenplay gives each animal their own characteristic that somewhat humanizes them, but still makes it believable that an animal would think or feel the way they do.  For example, Chloe the cat is often deadpan and sarcastic, which just sort of fits naturally with the nature of her species. (At one point, she tells Max, "I'm telling you this as a friend, but I really don't care...") Likewise, the dogs seem to be distracted by every little thing. The neighborhood dogs don't even notice Max and Duke being taken away by animal control, because they're focused on a butterfly.  If the movie had focused more on the behavior and quirks of animals and its own characters, not only would the movie have been smarter, but it probably would have worked better.  Maybe not as a full feature.  Like I said, a short or TV special probably would have been enough time to work out this idea to its full potential.

To stretch out the idea to a full 90 minutes, the filmmakers have instead chosen to focus on a lot of chase and fight scenes as our canine heroes find themselves being pursued through the sewers, nearly drowned, attacked by a giant snake, and taking a detour through a sausage factory, which leads to a very bizarre and mostly unnecessary musical number.  Most of these scenes seem inspired solely to keep the youngest kids in the audience focused on what's going on up on the screen, or perhaps to inspire levels for the inevitable video game adaptation.  None of it is really bad, but it does seem like very standard stuff for a movie like this.  We even get a scene where some of the animals steal a bus, when only a few weeks ago we saw aquatic creatures hijack a truck in Finding Dory.  I don't think anybody could have seen that becoming a trend when the summer movie season kicked off.

If I sound like I'm being too critical, it's not my intention.  The movie has enough charm to carry it all the way through, and there are still some scattered laughs during the action-heavy portion of the film, just not as much as the opening moments.  The movie does work, in no small part to its talented voice cast, who seem to be having a lot of fun bringing these characters to life.  And yes, I did start to care for these characters a little.  I wanted to see Gidget confess her feelings to Max, in particular.  I also liked the film's comment on cat videos on Youtube, and how critical Chloe is of them.  If the movie had more moments like this, it would be a home run.  As it is, I can see kids liking this, but parents and adult animation fans will probably be content with just one viewing.

The Secret Life of Pets is no better than it has to be, and while that's a bit of a disappointment, I still had fun watching it.  It's just thanks to films like Dory, Zootopia and April and the Extraordinary World, there's some strong competition out there.  When it comes to mid-level animated features, this definitely will do fine.  It just could have been so much more inspired than it is.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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