– By Cate Marquis –
THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS delivers less than trailer promises
The animated “The Secret Life of Pets” is one of those kids’ films that promises more than it delivers. The animated comedy from the studio that brought us “The Minions” is unlikely to knock “Zootopia” off its perch as the best animated children’s film so far this year.
The movie trailer made “The Secret Life of Pets” look hilarious. It showed with pets running wild or at least breaking type when their owners are away, but most of the funny stuff is in the trailer. Once the film goes through a couple of runs of “when the owner is away, the pets will play” and some comic bits at the dog park, the film was left with a lot of running time to fill.
The solution was a buddy story about a dog, Max (voiced by Louis CK) whose life is turned upside down when his owner Katie (voiced by Ellie Kemper) brings home a second dog called Duke (voiced by Eric Stonestreet). Duke is a big fuzzy bear of a thing, who eats all Max’s food and hogs his bed. The premise sounds a bit like the first “Toy Story” (think Woody and Buzz) but the film even drops this plot line – or more accurately, moves it towards the background., Instead, there is a tale about an underground network of abandoned pets, rising up against the people who left them behind – or flushed them down the drain. This ragged bunch lives in the sewer, so it includes lots of alligators and snakes. But they are led by an ex-magician’s bunny named Snowball (voiced by Kevin Hart), who is one angry killer rabbit. The “revenge of the flushed pets” theme is pretty good but the plot mashes it up with a lot of familiar “pets coming together for the team” bits, and standard buddy movie stuff between the two dogs.
While the film is far from perfect, it has a few enjoyable moments of comedy. Kevin Hart as Snowball the killer bunny is terrific (and a little extra laugh for Monty Python fans), spouting tough trash talk and street-smart swagger, despite actually being a little ball of white fluff. The world’s scraggliest alley cat, Ozone (voiced by Steve Coogan), gives a fun few minutes of craziness but then mostly disappears. A sequence where the two dogs are lost in Brooklyn and break into a sausage factory is probably the film’s comedy highlight.
More memorable characters could have helped get past some of the familiar plot elements but the scriptwriters opted for stereotypes in most cases. Chloe the cat (voiced by Lake Bell) is fat, pampered and indifferent to her owner, and white poodle Gidget (voiced by Jenny Slate) is a hyperactive bubble-headed romantic. The dogs are invariably loving, the pug is dumb as a rock, and the guinea pig is always lost in the duct work. The one kinda different character, a dignified-looking standard poodle who whips his head to loud techno as soon as his classic-music-loving owner leaves, is limited to that one joke.
“The Secret Life of Pets” is serviceable enough to occupy children for an afternoon, but it does not live up to its comic potential, meaning it is not memorable enough to last beyond summer’s warm days.
© Cate Marquis
