Editor’s Notes: The Secret Life of Pets is out in wide theatrical release today, July 8th.
If you anthropomorphize it, they will come. The “it” in the previous sentence applies to practically anything, from common household objects to animals. The “they” in the first sentence refers to moviegoers and their seemingly insatiable appetite for animation of the CGI kind (they left traditional cel animation behind more than a decade ago). Credit, of course, goes to Pixar not just for being first, but also being best, raising storytelling time and time again over two decades and more than twenty films. Imitators have come and gone too. DreamWorks Animation, Pixar’s closest competitor, taking a quantity over quality approach, has fallen further behind. Other competitors, like the Fox-owned Blue Sky Studios, seem content to churn out sequel after sequel to their one and only hit (Ice Age). The creators of Despicable Me, Illumination Entertainment, seemed bent on following the same path, releasing Despicable Me 2 and Minions back to back (Minions crossed the one billion dollar threshold last year). Their latest entry, The Secret Life of Pets, sidesteps franchise making for a new, if overly familiar, foray into the talking animal sub-genre.
The Secret Life of Pets posits a parallel universe where domesticated, latch-key pets enjoy not just rich inner lives resembling our own, but part and play when we’re not home to supervise them.
Borrowing more than a page or two (more like entire chapters to be more accurate) from Pixar’s first, most beloved hit, Toy Story, The Secret Life of Pets posits a parallel universe where domesticated, latch-key pets enjoy not just rich inner lives resembling our own, but part and play when we’re not home to supervise them. As human-like as they might be, however, they still retain many of their animal-based behaviors. That mix of human and non-human gives The Secret Life of Pets the source of much of its physical and verbal humor. Dogs love their owners with an almost obsessive fervor, while solipsistic cats, generally indifferent to our existence, live lives of pampered comfort. Setting The Secret Life of Pets in a hyper-stylized New York City, complete with fire escapes and perpetually open windows, allows said pets to roam freely from apartment to apartment, floor to floor, interacting with each other, throwing semi-wild parties, and otherwise acting like rich kids with too much time on their hands and little else to do.
While The Secret Life of Pets initially centers on Max (voiced by Louis C.K.), a wiry, Jack Russell Terrier with impossibly short, unstable legs, it quickly turns into a two-dog story with the unwanted introduction of Duke (Eric Stonestreet), a gigantic fur ball (Newfoundland), that Max’s once loyal owner, Katie (Ellie Kemper), brings home from the pound one day. Max hates the intrusion of Duke into his settled, coddled life. He hates Duke all the more for taking some of Katie’s attention away from him. Before long, Max and Duke are at each other’s throats (not literally, The Secret Life of Pets isn’t that kind of film), with Max attempting to engineer Duke’s ouster from Katie’s home. Max’s plan backfires, leaving both Max and Duke stranded in the big city, pursued by over-zealous animal control officers, and forced to pretend they’re not domesticated at all, but the opposite, fearsome, anti-owner feral dogs when they encounter a radical group of dispossessed animals, the Flushed Pets, led by an unhinged, human-hating rabbit, Snowball (Kevin Hart, in borderline caricature mode).
. . . a narrative so frantic and frenzied that will leave pre-teens holding their individual and collective breaths and parents reminding those same pre-teens to breathe every once in a while.
Once Snowball learns about Max and Duke’s true identities, he becomes their primary antagonist, setting off a chase through the streets and sewers of New York. Only Gidget (Jenny Slate), a white Pomeranian with an unrequited crush on Max, and her team-building skills (she exhorts Max’s friends to come his aid), stands between Snowball and his legion of unwanted pets on one side and Max and Duke, former foes turned allies, on the other side. Gidget also allies herself with Tiberius (Albert Brooks), a red-tailed hawk who initially sees her as a potential snack before changing his mind, and Pops (Dana Carvey), an aging Bassett Hound, among a veritable squad of supporting pets and players (too numerous to list here) that diverge and converge at various points during The Secret Life of Pets chase- and rescue-centered narrative, a narrative so frantic and frenzied that will leave pre-teens holding their individual and collective breaths and parents reminding those same pre-teens to breathe every once in a while.
Placing a premium on pacing and incident, The Secret Life of Pets makes only the occasional stop to drop some exposition or to let the characters – and by extension, the audience – take a much-needed mental break before the next chase and/or rescue scene. Pre-teens certainly won’t be bored, but parents and other adults in the audience might find the pacing too hurried and too exhausting. The over familiarity of the central plot will have little if any impact on children, though again parents and other adults might think otherwise, especially when the bridge-centered climax begins to remind them of an altogether similar scene from Finding Dory’s climax. Not surprisingly, comparing the two does The Secret Life of Pets few, if any favors. It’s also a reminder that superficial similarities can’t come close to duplicating Pixar’s multi-layered approached to storytelling.
The over familiarity of the central plot will have little if any impact on children, though again parents and other adults might think otherwise, especially when the bridge-centered climax begins to remind them of an altogether similar scene from Finding Dory’s climax. Not surprisingly, comparing the two does The Secret Life of Pets few, if any favors. It’s also a reminder that superficial similarities can’t come close to duplicating Pixar’s multi-layered approached to storytelling.
