Movie Review—'The Secret Life of Pets 2'

A couple things I should establish front-up:

One; I'm a huge film advocate.

Two; I'm perhaps an even bigger advocate for animation in film, no matter the studio or country of origin. I've always believed that animation deserves far more respect than it receives, especially when it comes to Western animated features; I'm sure that by this point even the least prolific of moviegoers have associated the word "animated" with "juvenile, trashy, distracting children's fare" at least once in their lives. But as much as I despise this stereotype, the majority of Western studios don't seem to care whatsoever that this art form is treated like this—which is especially apparent from the quality of the majority of the features they produce. Yes, this quality has been slowly climbing up much higher in recent years (which I want to discuss even more in a future story), yet it feels like in every line-up there's always just one Coco or Despicable Me for every five Ice Ages; for every transcendent work of art, there's an even larger number of unmemorable, unimpressive films pumped out alongside them—films that, although entertaining for the time being, once they're pulled from theaters, most moviegoers would either forget about them entirely, or remember them only to answer movie-geek trivia questions.

Which brings me to my last note: I personally consider the original Secret Life of Pets (2016) movie one of the latter. It was cute, amusing, nice to look at... but that's it. The funniest jokes showed up in only the first and last ten minutes (that is, the jokes that were spoiled in the very first trailer...), the characters were boring if designed well, and the plot was basically Toy Story, but with pets. It even used the exact same story beats as the Pixar film: the protagonist has been the human's companion for the longest time, but gets jealous of a newcomer, their rivalry gets them both lost, so they have to work together and become friends to find their way home, meanwhile their bumbling ensemble group of friends tries to find them first, and so on. It's a story that's been told a million times now, but Pets didn't even try to do anything new with it. Add to that a plethora of even more animated comedy cliches, and hit-or-miss humor, and that's basically the entire film. It's my personal favorite example of a time-waster that thinks it can become the next hot franchise by copying everyone else; obviously, not exactly the most compelling piece of media out there.

So, of course, I was not exactly jumping out of my seat when the first trailer for the sequel, simply titled The Secret Life of Pets 2 and directed by Chris Renaud, dropped last November.

Likewise, I was totally not expecting the final trailer, released just last month, to impress me enough to actually sit down to an opening weekend screening, let alone become even slightly interested in it.

You'll be happy to know that this movie is significantly better than the first; in fact, I would go so far as to say that this film was a "second attempt" at the original.

Now, this doesn't mean that it breaks any new ground, or deserves an Annie nomination, absolutely not. The plot doesn't contain any huge twists or narrative innovations, and the themes are extremely familiar to those who frequent showings of family films; it follows our protagonist Max (voiced by Patton Oswalt here, replacing Louis C.K. from the first movie) as he becomes a family dog, with his owner's preschool-age son eating up the majority of his attention. But, contrary to what you might expect from this premise—such as Max, or his best friend Duke (Eric Stonestreet) becoming jealous of their owner's husband and baby taking the attention away from them—the writers for Pets 2 made the fantastic decision to dodge those story beats, and explain them away in just the opening montage. We don't have to sit through another by-the-book jealousy story this time around; instead, they establish right away through time skips that the dogs did have to adjust to these new additions to their family, but they did come around enough by now that it's like they were never "new" additions at all; this is especially so for their owner's toddler son, Liam (voiced by Henry Lynch), who, instead of the object of conflict, is the object of Max's extremely protective attention.

This is how Pets 2 works as a retry of the first film; it takes the issues that I had with the original, and fixes them for this new entry. Plot beats that feel checked off of a cliche list? That doesn't happen here. Rather than retreading old ground in such bland ways, Pets 2 takes a more creative path, and instead tells a story of Max's internal, more emotional struggle that just about every parent in the audience can relate heavily to: learning how to be brave, and accept that your child can't stay under your watchful eyes forever.

I have to say, I was pretty impressed that they decided on such a mature storyline—one that they proved they could tell quite well, in fact. Great job on that, Illumination!

Of course, if you know much about these films, you already understand that Max's story is absolutely not the only plot here; the enormous cast listing makes that obvious. Thankfully, this was yet another element taken from the first film that the writers improved upon greatly; alongside Max there are two other pets, Gidget the Pomeranian (Jenny Slate), and Snowball the white rabbit (Kevin Hart), who have their own simultaneous adventures, which do eventually intertwine, and come together by the end. Again, in the first film, these intertwined storylines weren't used very well, and only seemed to be in there because it felt like a "requirement" of the Toy Story-inspired plot—but then, in this film, the writers took this trope in a far fresher and tighter-written direction by having all three separate plotlines share common themes, such as conquering fear, and what lengths you can go to protect something you love, among others. It isn't anything groundbreaking, by any stretch, but I can't tell you how relieving it was to watch a sequel that had significantly tighter writing than its predecessor.

To go along with this, there was significantly more to enjoy in this movie than the last one. The animation is gorgeous—as to be expected from Illumination Entertainment—with the animal designs in particular fitting in well with the detailed, realistic backgrounds. Fantastic casting has also always been a staple of Illumination's filmography, at least to me, and this is absolutely the case here; alongside the returnees like Eric Stonestreet, Lake Bell, and Jenny Slate are the newcomers such as Patton Oswalt, Tiffany Haddish, and Nick Kroll, who give it their all throughout the run time. I was particularly excited to hear Harrison Ford's dry, sarcastic voice coming out of Rooster the sheepdog, and he met every one of my expectations; but, of course, still nothing beats Kevin Hart's hilarious quips coming out of a tiny, fluffy bunny.

The humor was yet another element that Pets 2 improved in. When the first film was coming out I was in tears laughing at the pet-related jokes shown off in the trailer, and was excited to see more of that in the main film, only to be disappointed when it became apparent that that trailer showcased just about every instance of pet-humor that the movie had; meanwhile, Pets 2 showcased even more of that, with much of it acting as plot points as well as points for comedy—yet again, even more reasons to believe that the sequel is trying to fix what went wrong with its predecessor!

Overall, this movie was actually really satisfying for me. It improved greatly upon the first film—something that not a lot of sequels can boast—and had enough humor and fun to make it an enjoyable watch. Of course, it isn't the next Incredibles 2 or anything like that, but it's far from a time-waster or just plain bad.

I personally recommend this if you're just looking for something lighthearted and fun this weekend. If you're looking for something innovative or groundbreaking, you're definitely not going to find it here. But even with that, The Secret Life of Pets 2 is still totally worth a watch if you need something harmless and simple to brighten your day; me personally, it was a great stress reliever after a long week of summer blues—and really, sometimes, what more can you ask from entertainment?