The Secret Life of Pets

Voices of: Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet, Kevin Hart, Jenny Slate, Ellie Kemper, Albert Brooks, Lake Bell, Dana Carvey, Hannibal Burress, Bobby Moynihan, Chris Renaud, Steve Coogan
Directed by: Chris Renaud, Yarrow Cheney
Rating: PG
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy
2016

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Max's (Louis C.K.) perfect life as a dog is upended when his owner adopts a second dog (Eric Stonestreet).

Review:

Tim: It's been a while since I've seen such a promising idea squandered so completely as in The Secret Life of Pets. The basic premise here is simple and brilliant- what do our pets do when we're not around? This might not be original (see Toy Story, etc.) but we haven't see this fully explored with pets. That gives the men and women at Illumination Entertainment free reign to unleash the cutest, cuddliest animated pets we've ever seen, and put them in the middle of an adventure that happens right under our noses. It's brilliant. The problem is that the movie is pretty bad. Now, Universal/Illumination doesn't really care, because this film mad $368 million and landed as the fourth highest grossing film of 2016. Cute, animated pets will help that. Critics also responded, giving the film a 74% positive review on Rotten Tomatoes. Are you kidding me?

I'm obviously in the minority here, but once you look past the cute animation, this story is a total mess. Of all the crazy adventures these pets could have gone on, they uncover an underground, anti-human pet movement. This gang of flushed pets wants nothing more than to wipe out all humans. Seriously. This is the direction the story chose to go in. I could thing of a dozen better plots, ones that don't involve the death of humans. This is the central flaw of the film. So much potential just oozes out of the film because of this bizarrely chosen story line.

I can't claim the movie is very funny, either. It's obviously geared towards younger audiences (even the younger slice of the expected demographic). This is the kind of movie adults say, "It's cute" without actually thinking through what they just subjected themselves to. There's nothing special here, nothing especially clever, nothing with any depth. It's a simple story meant for simple audiences. Look to Disney, Pixar, or occasionally Dreamworks to see how you can tell a story aimed at children that has real emotional depth and substance to it. It's not impossible. Illumination has no idea how to do this. The same kind of issues plagued their Despicable Me franchise. None of those three films has anything special to it. Slot this film into that mix. The best thing Illumination has ever done is The Lorax, which is fairly telling. I don't know what their issue is, but they haven't cracked the code. Their films make a ton of money, so they probably aren't very interested in figuring out how to solve this issue. But, for discerning viewers, this is yet another disappointing slog to sit through.

This film isn't totally bad, I admit that. The interactions between Max and Duke are decent. The voice cast is fairly strong. I loved Louis C.K. as Max. Kevin Hart adds his recognizable voice to the mix. Albert Brooks always adds greatly to a voice cast. Eric Stonestreet, Ellie Kemper, and the rest of the cast are strong.

I know I'm in the minority here, but I just didn't find The Secret Life of Pets compelling. A great idea was wasted on a stupid story. Cute animation failed to generate the emotional connection that was needed. The movie isn't particularly funny or intelligent. I know most kids won't recognize any of that, so I guess Illumination gets credit for pandering to their audience. I just believe that other animation studios have found a better path, and I hope this studio figures it out soon.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 5.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Despicable Me, Sing