Editor’s Notes: The Secret Life of Pets is out in wide theatrical release today, July 8th.
The Secret Life of Pets comes from that Minions school of over-energized animated slapstick, the kind that usually results in humor only kids in the single digits can appreciate. The colors are bright and the animation pops, but the jokes are delivered like an incessant sledgehammer, and apparently my old achin’ bones can’t sustain the abuse anymore. You could refer to me as a curmudgeon, and you’d be right – though clearly this isn’t just an age issue. In an era when animated sophistication is on the rise and films are delivering something substantial for adults as well as kids, criticisms aren’t as simple as claiming a generational divide. I mean, even Finding Dory goes madcap now and again, and it works perfectly. The Secret Life of Pets, however, is a different beast – like Universal set the iTunes speed to 1.5x and let the movie run for its duration.
The Secret Life of Pets comes from that Minions school of over-energized animated slapstick, the kind that usually results in humor only kids in the single digits can appreciate.
Not only that, but this material running on fast-forward for 90 minutes is surprisingly rote, like it was molded in a standard animated search-and-rescue adventure template. The only “secret life” elements are essentially glimpsed in the trailers, and make up about 8 total minutes of actual film running time – and those are great minutes. The film’s opening is a wondrous travelogue charting a course from Brooklyn to New York City, celebrating the iconography along the way and introducing us to a variety of colorful characters who conduct their own adventures while pining for their owners to arrive home at the end of the day. Similarly, the closing moments are warm and fuzzy images of reconciliation, the symmetrical denouement counterpoint to that lovely opening overture. It’s just all the junk in between that causes the problems.
If there’s one good thing that has resulted from this, we can now forever say that Louis C.K. was the lead in an animated film.
When I think of a concept like “Secret Life of Pets,” I think of those opening and closing moments – the daily misadventures our beloved pets conduct while we’re away at work or school. The filmmakers, however, think of “Secret Life” as a massive conglomeration of pets who set off on a fantastical adventure throughout the city, replete with lost loves, dastardly villains, and car wrecks along the Brooklyn Bridge. Since this sort of mayhem takes place in virtually every animated adventure, I don’t consider that much of a secret.
If there’s one good thing that has resulted from this, we can now forever say that Louis C.K. was the lead in an animated film. He voices Max, a terrier in Manhattan whose life is relatively simple – he clocks the hours waiting for human Katie (voiced by Ellie Kemper) to come home by spending time with his cadre of buddies in the apartment building. This, with a little screenwriting ingenuity, would be enough for the movie to survive on. There is a topper, though. Max is dismayed when Katie brings home a new companion – a giant stray mutt named Duke (voiced by Eric Stonestreet). Their ensuing tete-a-tete would, again, be provide enough juice for a whole movie. But unfortunately that wasn’t enough for director Chris Renaud and writers Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio, and Brian Lynch, who then re-top themselves by adding an insane adventure involving a mob boss of stray pets (voiced by Kevin Hart, natch), who steals Max’s would-be cat girlfriend, and then someone else gets lost….and on and on. Lots of losing and finding going on, which seems less like a “secret life” than it does a copycat of most other anthropomorphized animal adventures. The humor is staccato, not quite as grating as Minions but with the same relentless zeal. There’s even an animals-drive-a-car climax that feels entirely irrelevant in the wake of Finding Dory’s similar themed but much more purposeful finale.
Once all the high-pitched hysteria dies down, and we return to that romantic cityscape we glimpsed at the beginning, we are reminded what The Secret Life of Pets could’ve been, if only it took its Ritalin.
Once all the high-pitched hysteria dies down, and we return to that romantic cityscape we glimpsed at the beginning, we are reminded what The Secret Life of Pets could’ve been, if only it took its Ritalin.
