The Secret Life of Pets 2

Voices of: Patton Oswalt, Eric Stonestreet, Kevin Hart, Harrison Ford, Jenny Slate, Tiffany Haddish, Ellie Kemper, Lake Bell, Dana Carvey, Hannibal Burress, Bobby Moynihan, Chris Renaud, Nick Kroll
Directed by: Chris Renaud, Jonathan del Val
Rating: PG
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy
2019

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Max (Patton Oswalt) is forced to face his fears and anxiety during a trip to the countryside.

Review:

Tim: I've been notoriously critical of the original The Secret Life of Pets, so I have to admit I felt great surprise that this sequel is better than the first film. Yes, it still has a number of flaws, but it's a marked improvement. You don't often see sequels do that, so while The Secret Life of Pets 2 isn't good enough, you do have to applaud the film for increasing in quality.

One of the best changes was switching up the voice of Max. You don't often see this happen in animated movies, but Louis C.K. has gotten into enough trouble in recent years that you understand why it happened. By all accounts, Patton Oswalt seems to be a better human being than Louis C.K., so the movie automatically gets bonus points there. It helps that Oswalt does exceptional voice work, too. His voice better suits Max anyway, especially in the context of the story here. At the time, I really enjoyed Louis C.K. as Max, but I think I enjoyed Oswalt even more. I was glad to see this change take place.

It also helps that the story is an improvement over the first one. I despised the story of the original, with the subterranean mistreated and abandoned pets who hated humans. It was a terrible storyline for a kid's movie. This film has two main plots- the one with Max is incredible. It's a story about him having to face his fears and his anxiety. It represents a clear character development arc, it allows you to get to know his character at a deeper level, and it makes you root for him. I thoroughly enjoyed all the scenes on this side of the plot. It helps that you have Harrison Ford doing his typical gruff thing as Rooster. Ford couldn't be more different than Oswalt, and they work so well together. Max is certainly an underdog (haha) here. That plot felt like what these movies should have been about- it's heartwarming, exciting, and entertaining. If that was the whole plot of the film, I would have probably enjoyed this movie. Still, on this side of the film, I have to give the movie a ton of credit.

Unfortunately, this potential franchise couldn't just tell a focused story. The other side of the plot is an absolute mess. This involves Kevin Hart's Snowball, a character who is best taken in small doses. This part of the movie is ridiculous and also feels most similar to the poor plot of the original. The story makes so little sense- it involves trying to rescue a rare white tiger, which quite frankly is a stupid idea for a movie about pets. There's all the scenes with the abusive circus owner and I'm just rolling my eyes and throwing my head back. Those scenes were too over-the-top and simply did not work. They made significantly less logical sense and felt all flash, with no real heart or emotion beneath them. They wreck this movie. The main story works and is entertaining, yet this movie is pulled down by these ineffective scenes.

The animation is decent, the animals are certainly cute. This movie suffers from not having truly memorable characters, although I suppose Max and Snowball are certainly on their way there. I really enjoyed the character of Rooster, too. The rest were too forgettable (plus, there's way, way too many characters in this film).

While I enjoyed The Secret Life of Pets 2 more than the original, of course, critics had it completely backwards. I'm still shocked the first movie received such great reviews. So many critics were wrong on that one, and they probably felt like they had to make it up here, because this one got pretty rough reviews. Both movies are bad, but this one is significantly better. One other thing that made me happy is that this movie made over $200 million less domestically than the first one. I know that's terrible news for Illumination, but audiences spoke. A ton of people went to see the first movie, it wasn't very good, and so they stayed away from this one. That's good news for audiences and I hope it makes Illumination take a hard look at its film strategy. I've continually criticized it for delivering movies that aren't nearly as good as Pixar or Dreamworks. Both those studios tend to be overrated (I think they deliver a bunch of bad movies, too), but they also have some big hits. The best thing Illumination has done is Sing and I wouldn't be flying that banner too highly (the Minions and all that are awful). I liked this movie more than the first, but I didn't enjoy it. I'm glad this was a box office failure and I hope it's the last of these movies we see.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Secret Life of Pets, Despicable Me, Sing