[four-star-rating]Voices of Louis CK, Kevin Hart, Eric Stonestreet, Jennie Slate, Ellie Kemper, Albert Brooks[/four-star-rating]
Pet lovers are often animation lovers, too, I know, looking to our animals for wildly, colorful entertainment – like living cartoons. We search online for videos of puppies who act like goofballs or kittens who don’t quite make the jump. The Secret Life of Pets taps into that great slapstick so many of us love.
It is a good thing the characters – as shallow as they are – and the shtick liven things up. The story in Pets is really a retelling of the first Toy Story, where the established dog/toy gets displaced by the new dog/toy. A rivalry ensues that takes both of these enemies far outside, far from their comfort zones, and then they must band together to survive the cruel out-of-doors and find their ways back home.
Like the plot, even the pets’ names are a smidgen dull: Max (Louis CK) and Duke (Stonestreet). So, it’s fun to see a dachshund use a Kitchen Aid for a massage. Or to watch a bored cat shred a domicile. Those and many other goofy moments make Pets so adorable.
I mean, even the filmmakers must know they don’t have much story to offer us when one prolonged scene is a Busby Berkley number with dogs in a sausage factory. A tune from Grease plays, and the sausages sing along. I’m not kidding. It’s hilarious, but it really is a plot stopper.
Thankfully, we have a lot of moments like ones provided by Tiberius. He’s a semi-reformed falcon (the brilliantly funny Brooks). He wants to be kind and helpful, to have friends. But every so often, he almost loses control and kills a gerbil in the gang.
Physical comedy abounds. Once Max and Duke are out in the wilds of the city, they run into an alley full of vicious stray cats. What those felines do – flinging Max around by his leash – is as funny as any Three Stooges or Marx Brothers bit.
Consequently, the animation is serviceable. Illumination Studios (who works through Universal) also did the Despicable Me films and The Lorax. This artwork isn’t quite as polished and deep as Disney, but it’s not as rudimentary and geometric as Blue Sky (the Ice Age films). Directors Chris Renaud and Yarrow Cheney have already led most of Illumination’s other films.
[rating-key]
For the youngest kids, the film can be a little dark – like the sewers below the city. This is where the evil bunny Snowball (Hart) and all the other unwanted pets live; they have a terrorist sleeper cell and plan to kill humans.
However, most of this is delightfully funny and light. Pets is like all those YouTube dogs who sing along to pop tunes or the cats who get themselves into hilarious, compromised positions.
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