Would you like to see a Capuchin monkey in a kung fu battle with a bunny on a speeding circus train? Of course you would. I think the Pets franchise has completely lost the place where it began, but I can’t fault it for failure to invent controversy, now can I?
The Secret Life of Pets gave us comic insight as to how our pets lived when we went away. It had a very Toy Story feel for obvious reason: it’s essentially the same film. The Secret Life of Pets 2 pretty much announced that we’ve already learned whatever we needed to know about how our pets handle themselves when we go away and instead offered three ridiculous story lines, first the most normal where “Tiny Dog” Max (voice of Patten Oswalt, no longer Louis C.K.) goes to a farm to overcome his anxieties, a second where toy dog Gidget (Jenny Slate) goes undercover as a cat to rescue a dog toy, and a third where the personality-oversaturated Snowball (Kevin Hart) and the rest of the gang rescue a white tiger from the circus. These aren’t so much Secret Lives as silly lives. Have you got room in your heart for silly?
Max has so much anxiety he wears a cone for self protection. This is anthropomorphic projectionism with a capital P. Not that your pet can’t get anxiety, but how valuable is this revelation for the film’s average eight-year-old viewer, huh? [BTW, if your eight-year-old already has crippling anxiety, I’m not sold on the idea that The Secret Life of Pets 2 is a suitable cure.] I was bugged that Max is still the center of the story; I thought he learned to get along with his much larger housemate, Duke (Eric Stonestreet), at the end of the first film … so Duke is still a secondary character even though they share the exact same space? That seems wrong. I guess an anxious pet is funnier than a chia pet.
While on –for lack of a better word- vacation, Max becomes the unwitting student of gruff country dog Rooster (Harrison Ford), which is not unlike the relationship between Billy Crystal and Jack Palance in City Slickers – only in animated pet form. Meanwhile, Gidget has been entrusted with Max’s special toy, which, in turn, becomes a hostage in an apartment infested with cats. Oh well. Lastly, the best character in the film, Snowball the bunny, plays dress up all day long at the behest of a writing staff who have clearly never attempted to outfit a rodent in real life.
[I used to have pat rats. It was much better than it sounds. Rats are actually darn good pets if you can get past the RAT! Part. Anyhoo, I once tried to make basketball uniforms for the rats. Yes, I did. The results were not pretty in any sense of the word.]
Another toy dog, Daisy (Tiffany Haddish) –and believe me, the preponderance of toy dogs vis-à-vis real genuine useful dogs in both animated and real life forms bugs me, a lot- announces the need for a hero as a white tiger is in need of rescue. Hence, Snowball’s superhero alter ego gets to come out and play for the rest of the film.
Lemme put this simply: any moment with a human on screen is pretty much a waste of time. The humans are boring and the animals don’t act up while the humans are awake. Now, while the animal-only scenes are infinitely better imagined, they seem forced. Here you have a toy dog, a sedan full of housecats, and a bunny in a superhero costume out to rescue a tiger from the circus. Ladies and gentleman, however you may enjoy the action, it does not get any more contrived than that. This is the kind of film where you fall asleep early and hope you wake up in a place where you can just smile and go with it. Could be a lot of fun, but if you’re not eight years old I wouldn’t bank on it.
There once was a bunny named Snowball
Who acted liked something from Roald Dahl
His narcissistic bent
Essentially meant
His failure could only be global
Rated PG, 86 Minutes
Director: Chris Renaud, Jonathan del Val
Writer: Brian Lynch
Genre: Crazy shit happens to your pet, maybe
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Children with pets
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The unimaginative
