Illumination Entertainment has yet to find its niche as an animated studio. Sure, they’ve found success with the Despicable Me franchise – though a spin-off, Minions didn’t go off as planned – but they’re still the redheaded stepchild in comparison to the more recognizable names of Pixar and Disney. Illumination’s latest hopes to remind audiences of their formidable adversaries; The Secret Life of Pets presents diversionary fun in a crisp 90-minute package, but it never cements itself as an individual, preferring to crib from its enemies.
Max (Louis C.K.) loves his owner, Katie (Ellie Kemper). But when Katie brings home a new dog, the hulking Duke (Eric Stonestreet), the two get along like oil and water. Max and Duke are soon forced to deal with their problems when they’re lost on the mean streets of New York and run afoul of Snowball (Kevin Hart), a bunny who believes pets and humans don’t mix.
It’s worth noting how Illumination and Universal are promoting The Secret Life of Pets—by advertising it as a comedy about what pets do when they’re left alone, with no mention of an actual plot. The various trailers amount to approximately 20 minutes of actual screentime. Each morning the owners of several New York pets leave for work, allowing their animals to do fun things like play death metal, watch TV or eat from the refrigerator. It is actually these Looney Tunes-esque vignettes that end up being more memorable than the running storyline because we’ve all thought our pets can’t just spend eight hours gnawing shoes, right?
Max and Duke, the characters at the center of everything, subscribe to the “Woody and Buzz” school of character traits; Max is the “original” pet with a well-trod routine with Katie that’s undone by Duke’s boisterousness. In a move ripped right out of Toy Story, Max and Duke try to get rid of each other before banding together against a common enemy but, like many of the characters in The Secret Life of Pets, there’s little definition separating the various characters, short of species, and all of them are fairly generic.
Max and Duke notwithstanding, you also have Max’s girlfriend (in her head only), Gidget (Jenny Slate); an apathetic cat named Chloe (Lake Bell); Finding Nemo/Dory star Albert Brooks, who goes from the sea to the air as a falcon named Tiberius; and Dana Carvey – getting one of the funniest lines in the film – plays a blind, disabled dog named Pops. Each character gets a scene to shine and there are plenty of pan gags – wherein something is knocked over causing a chain reaction of supposed jokes – for everyone to interact with.
But nothing sets these characters off as enduring figures like Toy Story’s ensemble, which Secret Life of Pets is clearly hoping to become. Once the initial gimmick of what everyone does once the humans leave segues into them going out on their own, the script loses the desire to illustrate these characters as personalities and to, dare I say, make them real. I didn’t care about Max’s friends. In fact, the only character with anything passing for an arc is Duke. Stonestreet’s shaggy dog gets the film’s one moment of true emotion, and it’s enough to eke out the required tears animated films demand nowadays.
The rest of the voice cast is solid, and though you’re asking who voiced specific characters, this isn’t filled with big personalities that overshadow them, for the most part. The biggest name you’ll notice is Hart as the villain Snowball. The script decides on two separate plots, shortchanging them both overall, when in actuality Snowball’s storyline is the better of the two. Almost a sequel to Pixar’s short Presto, Snowball wants to separate humans and pets forever. Though Hart’s voice is easily deduced, he has some great moments that all stem from a bunny doing unnatural things like karate or driving a bus as “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” plays. (Actually, there are a lot of jabs at Brooklyn in this film, including Snowball’s not being into “hipster real estate trends.”)
Probably The Secret Life of Pets’ grossest injustice is the product placement. New York City has its fair share of promotional billboards, but NBC/Universal doesn’t waste a single second before promoting themselves. Little kids will want to watch “Saturday Night Live,” “The Voice” and Illumination’s next animated musical, Sing, because of how prominent their placement is within the film.
Preceding everything is a short starring those banana-loving franchise machines, the Minions. “Minion Mower” sees the group raising money for a blender by mowing lawns. The short is harmless enough, if overly reliant on bathroom humor and a poor-taste joke about Alzheimer’s (the characters visit Fuzzy Memories Rest Home to find customers).
Though there are predictions that this film will upset current box office leader—and Illumination’s foe—Finding Dory, I’m not so sure. The Secret Life of Pets has a great premise, but it fears the audience will be bored by vignettes—similar fears were lobbed at the silent Wall-E—so a driving plot is introduced that never fully coalesces. It’s almost feared that heart and sensitivity won’t work for their target audience, thus we get product placement, Beastie Boys and a fighting bunny rabbit. Maybe Illumination and Universal should look at why Pixar succeeds instead of just ripping them off and regurgitating the leftovers.
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