The Secret Life of Pets Trailer- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ4WBlveGfw
Watching the trailer to this movie, I came up with mediocre expectations. I didn't imagine The Secret Life of Pets to be a terrible movie, but I didn't think it'd be as memorable as other movies such as Disney's Frozen either. Watching the trailer countless times, I was about sick of seeing that maniacal Kevin Hart bunny and that rock-and-roll poodle trashing his home. Regardless, I watched the movie in hopes that The Secret Life of Pets would become a pleasant surprise.
Would it be the new kid's classic film or instead be a waste of animation and time?
The story was as followed: What pets do when their owners are away. However, this wasn't exactly the main plot to The Secret Life of Pets. The problem of the movie centered around the journey of a little brown and white terrier named Max and his new large and unruly "brother," Duke. After the two grow animosity towards each other, the pair get themselves in a series of wild adventures that results in them gaining some enemies and having their friends trying to save them.
Something I noticed about the story was that it was really short. An hour and 38 minutes passed, yet it felt like only an hour to me. I was surprised at how things wrapped up so nicely at the end for the characters, and depending on your opinion, this can either be a really good or bad thing to do for this type of movie.
I can think of a couple pros and cons that can come out of a film that is this short. Starting for the negatives, there's little to no development. I do not believe any character went through any major character change, with the exception of Duke, but even then it feels like it doesn't stick with him in the end. We are given one scene of his anguish, but afterwards he seems completely fine and doesn't confide in anyone about his pain. Without major spoilers, what he goes through is something that whether your a pet or a human, is some pretty heartbreaking stuff, and yet the film disregards it as soon as its addressed.
Another con is simple: there's nothing more to this movie. Just a simple chase around New York with wacky antics. Can we know more about how Max and Duke's owner, Katie is like? Can we get a deeper insight into why Gidget likes Max? Can we get an idea of why Snowball the rabbit is quickly at ease with his outcome in the story?!
Despite my complaints, this leads me into the positives of the movie which is....do we really need all that information? Is it necessary to make a movie that delves into the motivations behind characters?
For some movies, that is mandatory, but for The Secret Life of Pets, I think it has an excuse. Though it could use a little push on the character development, the final product is passable and I'm sure not many will complain about it. I suppose this film doesn't need to tell us why the pets behave the way they do, because they know children are mature enough to understand it. It doesn't need to be thrown in their face and I respect that.
It was short, but it was also entertaining for the right reasons. Each characters had a strong personality and brought out at least one good laugh out of the audience. The humor is a little dated (e.g talking about youtube), but I don't think they did that so much that it got annoying. There is only one pee joke and a couple of scenes where animals are shaking their butt; many are getting sick of these jokes in kids' movies, but there's not a lot of them so I would give those a pass too.
It knew when to be fast-paced and take it slow, so there wasn't always constant noise. The animators also must has aimed for their art to look very adorable, because they succeeded in making the pets look almost harmless and provide that shocking effect when they'd go from cute to downright cruel.
Besides, a story like this doesn't really need to go on longer than its runtime. It told its story and tied up the loose ends. That's all it really needs and I'm content that the writers didn't force the story to go on and leave us with too much useless filler.
Ultimately, there's not much I can say about this film. I believe it's a cute story, but again-if it had just a little more push into character development, I think it could be better. But as it is, it's still not bad. It's just not...WOW! I'd say three out of five stars.
P.S There is a Minion short before the movie begins. It was all right, just what you'd expect of Minions. Wild craziness with a hint of annoyance.
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
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Is it just me, or did this movie have a lot of instances where it sounded like a character was going to say, "Shit"? I had a near heart attack during the scene where Tiberius called out to Gidget and said, "I'm right over here in this shed..." If they didn't show the shed, I would've sworn he said, "Shit" and I would've wondered how in the world they'd allow a curse word in a PG movie.
I kind of wanted Gidget and Tiberius together, they had more chemistry (even if it did start out with Tiberius trying to eat Gidget) than Gidget and Max. Max only noticed her after she kicked butt on the bridge, so before that he had no care for her. I mean, other animals did a lot to try to save him too, what makes Gidget special to Max now? I know, I know, he said he realized all the times she cared about him, but still...well, sounds like I support inter-species relationships.
That pig who had all the tattoos on his body...that is so cruel. They don't actually do that right?
The Ricky jokes were a little excessive, but they were all a hit. I cracked up at all of them.
I was surprised at how Duke's old owner died and even more at how they handled it. So the cat at Duke's old home says his owner died, Duke freaks out...and then what? He's soon back to his old self. Stuff like that changes you for a while, how can Duke be fully happy being with his new owner when he hasn't had time to grieve over his old one?
At first I was so confused as to why Snowball was quickly accepting of being a pet for a little girl, but then I figured he wanted to be loved all along. A bigger question would be, where are those girl's parents? She did ask her mom to get her Snowball (and his friends) as pets, but the mother is nowhere to be seen. I'm a little surprised Snowball stayed with her, the parents would've got him checked for diseases.
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