The Secret Life of Pets
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louis C.K.
kevin hart
jenny slate
[Slaps Ozone] Don’t look at him! [Slaps Ozone again] Look at me! Nobody can help you! Where. Is. MAX?!
~ Gidget
quick fox: C-
Winding dragon
There are many films that follow the basic question: What do pets do when their owners aren’t looking? As far as animation is concerned, some features that come to mind include Lady and the Tramp (1955), The Fox and the Hound (1981), All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), Balto (1995), and How to Train Your Dragon (2010).
In other words, setting pets as the focal point of a movie is not an original concept. Where these films try to separate themselves (with varying degrees of success) is through an original twist on the idea. For example, Lady and the Tramp uses the pets as metaphors for human issues like racial/class struggles and out-of-wedlock pregnancy. All Dogs Go to Heaven is a gangster film with pets involved in the criminal underground. And How to Train Your Dragon bonds Hiccup with an unorthodox pet.
The biggest disappointment with The Secret Life of Pets (2016) from Illumination Entertainment is that it never establishes an overarching conceit, and instead relies on a playful animation style to dazzle the audience. Pieced together like a series of isolated scenes rather than an overall structure, the film begins with Max (Louis C.K.), a Jack Russell Terrier, who feels threatened when his owner adopts Duke (Eric Stonestreet), a large shaggy mongrel. After a foiled sabotage attempt, Max and Duke gets ensnared with a sewer bunny named Snowball (Kevin Hart) and his devious plot to kill all humans. Spoiler: this plot thread, like most in the film, leads absolutely nowhere. Meanwhile, Max’s lovesick neighbor Gidget (Jenny Slate), a white Pomeranian and easily the best character, leads a ragtag team of misfit animals on a rescue mission for Max and Duke.
The Secret Life of Pets is like eating day-old French fries: they look better than they taste. I don’t think anybody denies that the animals are fluffy and adorable and that Illumination did a masterful job of rendering New York City, but the film is mostly show with little substance. The humor quality hits the target audience; it’s filled with childish gags about animal droppings and cartoonish violence. To be fair, though, the best joke in the movie is when Gidget turns into a hard-nosed interrogator and slaps the furball out of a bald cat.
The film neither loses its respectability nor does it surpass it. There was plenty of opportunity for it to be meaningful, like when Snowball talks about his anger over being a rejected pet or Duke searches for his old owner, but it’s all too okay with skating by on a flat level. The animation and cute animals are certainly enough to keep younger audiences entertained, but it’s a film that’s going to see diminishing returns the older you get.