Year: 2016
Directors: Yarrow Cheney & Chris Renaud
Starring: Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet, Jenny Slate, Kevin Hart, Lake Bell, Albert Brooks, and Dana Carvey
Tagline: Ever wonder what your pets do when you're not home?
Synopsis: Max is Katie's dog. But his life is turned upside down when Katie brings home Duke, a shelter dog.
Tagline: Ever wonder what your pets do when you're not home?
Synopsis: Max is Katie's dog. But his life is turned upside down when Katie brings home Duke, a shelter dog.
Review
Before the feature film was the short "Mower Minions." Basically, a group of Minions decide they need a blender, which means they need money. They proceed to offer lawn care to a retirement home. Minion mayhem ensues. It was amusing. I chuckled a few times. I rolled my eyes a few more times.
The simplest way to explain The Secret Life of Pets is, it's like cotton candy. It's colorful. It's sweet. It's nice enough while it lasts. But in the end, there's no real substance and there's absolutely no nutritional value. Cotton candy isn't bad from time to time. But it's not very satisfying.
Is the film fun? Yeah, it's fairly fun. There are some clever visual gags (such as watching Buddy the Dachshund get around) and humorous bits of dialogue. There are definitely some humorous moments. And the initial premise is clever. But the secret life of these pets too soon turns into a typical fish-out-of-water scenario on the dogs' side and a rescue mission on the other animals' side. The comparisons to Toy Story are well-founded.
My favorite character was Tiberius the hawk who shows enormous self-restraint in not preying on the other animals. (Tiberius is voiced by Albert Brooks, who also voices Marlin in Finding Nemo/Dory. This is sort of a role reversal where he is now the equivalent of Bruce the shark.) Chloe the cat is also amusing, and every bit what you'd expect from a cat in the YouTube age.
Despite being a dog person myself, I found the two main dogs (Max and Duke) rather unlikable. They are both verging on annoying and I could never emotionally invest in either of them, which meant I didn't really invest in their journey. The motley rescue team is much funnier and more likable.
And then there is the villain: the psychotic bunny with his army of "flushed" pets. It's not that I couldn't take the threats of a bunny serious, it was that he was so serious. He was played for humor, but his motivations and intents are pretty dark. And as the story progresses, he becomes a rather schizoid villain. I found him annoying and overly dramatic.
When it isn't worrying too much about its shoehorned plot, the film offers an amusing representation of how we as humans perceive our pets and the personalities they have. The cat is the prototypical cat. The dogs do what we imagine dogs do. The parakeet has awesome delusions of fighter jet grandeur. It's amusing for what it is. But it stumbles when it tries to stretch itself into a feature length plot.
If you're a pet person, you'll probably find quite a bit to enjoy in The Secret Life of Pets, especially the first 10 minutes or so. It's a likable movie worth a viewing. But in a year or two, I for one will have forgotten this movie existed. As a movie about pets, perhaps it is fitting that it is mostly just fluff.
The simplest way to explain The Secret Life of Pets is, it's like cotton candy. It's colorful. It's sweet. It's nice enough while it lasts. But in the end, there's no real substance and there's absolutely no nutritional value. Cotton candy isn't bad from time to time. But it's not very satisfying.
Is the film fun? Yeah, it's fairly fun. There are some clever visual gags (such as watching Buddy the Dachshund get around) and humorous bits of dialogue. There are definitely some humorous moments. And the initial premise is clever. But the secret life of these pets too soon turns into a typical fish-out-of-water scenario on the dogs' side and a rescue mission on the other animals' side. The comparisons to Toy Story are well-founded.
My favorite character was Tiberius the hawk who shows enormous self-restraint in not preying on the other animals. (Tiberius is voiced by Albert Brooks, who also voices Marlin in Finding Nemo/Dory. This is sort of a role reversal where he is now the equivalent of Bruce the shark.) Chloe the cat is also amusing, and every bit what you'd expect from a cat in the YouTube age.
Despite being a dog person myself, I found the two main dogs (Max and Duke) rather unlikable. They are both verging on annoying and I could never emotionally invest in either of them, which meant I didn't really invest in their journey. The motley rescue team is much funnier and more likable.
And then there is the villain: the psychotic bunny with his army of "flushed" pets. It's not that I couldn't take the threats of a bunny serious, it was that he was so serious. He was played for humor, but his motivations and intents are pretty dark. And as the story progresses, he becomes a rather schizoid villain. I found him annoying and overly dramatic.
When it isn't worrying too much about its shoehorned plot, the film offers an amusing representation of how we as humans perceive our pets and the personalities they have. The cat is the prototypical cat. The dogs do what we imagine dogs do. The parakeet has awesome delusions of fighter jet grandeur. It's amusing for what it is. But it stumbles when it tries to stretch itself into a feature length plot.
If you're a pet person, you'll probably find quite a bit to enjoy in The Secret Life of Pets, especially the first 10 minutes or so. It's a likable movie worth a viewing. But in a year or two, I for one will have forgotten this movie existed. As a movie about pets, perhaps it is fitting that it is mostly just fluff.
Quotable Quotes
- "I'm a cat." "Well, nobody's perfect." -- Chloe and Pops [This is a reference to the classic comedy Some Like It Hot.]
- "Who said that?" "Over here ... in the dark and foreboding shed." -- Gidgit and Tiberius
- "Max, as your friend, I don't care about you or your problems." -- Chloe (a cat)
ISFS
Thanks for the review. I got quite tired of the PetSmart movie tie-in commercials that seemed to air constantly (at least on the kinds of channels my mom likes to watch), but they were funny the first couple of times I saw them. Sounds like a good one to use a free Redbox code on when the kids want a family movie night. Other than that, I won't stress about missing it for any length of time.
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