The Secret is out… and funny.
Like Mower Minions, a Minions short which precedes it theatrically, The Secret Life of Pets is a frenetic ball of energy, a movie which doesn't so much get you to like it as it does beat you into submission. What's more, it wins. By the time a sequence inside a sausage factory draws to a close, everyone in the audience has succumbed to the movie's charms, even if one doesn't feel great about having done so.
Directed by Chris Renaud (Despicable Me and its sequel) and co-directed by Yarrow Cheney (production designer on both Despicable Me films), Secret Life of Pets is the story of a terrier mix named Max (Louis C.K.), his friends, and the sorts of trouble they find. There is an implication in the film's title that these sorts of things happen fairly regularly, although due to the scope of the story and the havoc the pets wreak in New York City (things like shutting down part of the Brooklyn Bridge), that feels unlikely.
On this particular occasion, Max is dealing with his owner, Katie (Ellie Kemper), having picked up a new dog, a rescue named Duke (Eric Stonestreet). Not only does Max not want to share Katie and his home, Duke is unsure about sharing as well. Duke—who definitely has a size advantage—would be perfectly happy to see Max disappear.
It is, quite clearly, a mutual dislike, one which is acted upon and balloons until both animals find themselves on the run from the dog catchers and a crazed rabbit named Snowball (Kevin Hart). Snowball is the unlikely leader of a large animal resistance, the Flushed Pets, a group that wants revenge on all of humanity and which doesn't mind getting rid of domesticated animals either. Unquestionably it is a weird, outlandish, tale and as the film goes on it only becomes more weird and more outlandish.
Secret Life of Pets doesn't stay on Max and Duke, nor Snowball and company, the entire time. It further breaks things up with Max's friends, including Gidget (Jenny Slate), Mel (Bobby Moynihan), Chloe (Lake Bell), and Buddy (Hannibal Buress) joining forces with a hawk Tiberius (Albert Brooks), and an elderly dog, Pops (Dana Carvey), in order to rescue their friend.
As numerous animals are represented—Gidget's group alone includes dogs, a cat, a hawk, and a budgie—Secret Life of Pets regularly riffs on our expectations of animal behavior, sometimes subverting them (a poodle listens to metal) and sometimes playing into them (cats are aloof, dogs crave companionship). Whichever way the film chooses to go at any given moment, it regularly leads to something funny.
The various storylines weave in and out of one another, with the movie constantly moving from one to the next. Rather than this occurring out of a need/desire to tell a interesting tale or offer character growth, it offers the sense that it does so in order to keep things moving – one wacky scene has finished, so shifting to another storyline allows a new wacky one to start. Occasionally things will slow down, but when this occurs the lull tends to pull the viewer out of the tale and wonder just how any of this could be happening in the first place (obviously it can't, but it is better that no one think about that as it is unfolding).
Of course, as weird as scenes and characters might be, they are funny. Hart is particularly brilliant as Snowball, offering up an un utterly non-stop pace with joke after joke after joke. The notion of a cute little white bunny as the leader of an animal resistance out to do away with humans is moderately amusing by itself, but Hart sells it in a way that could have a human audience wondering if things might be better were Snowball to succeed.
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We want to hear it.All of this is combined with some amazing visuals. Secret Life of Pets opens with a spectacular fly-through of New York City and then regularly impresses throughout with its moving camera, vibrant colors, and level of detail.
As diverting as the visuals and some scenes are, it is all done in service of an overarching storyline that is never, not for a single second, in doubt. It makes the movie feel like something of an above average sleight of hand magic trick, one where the audience is shown the right hand waving manically to catch everyone's attention while the left hand is where the important bits are going on. The problem is that all too regularly that left hand and what it's doing remains in full view. A momentary subplot with Duke's remembering his previous owner feels particularly out of place and included to both pad the runtime and offer an all-too-late explanation of Duke's mindset.
The Verdict
Full of great moments, funny jokes, off-the-wall characters, and some beautiful imagery, The Secret Life of Pets is sure to amuse many filmgoers. It is, however, a movie that amuses in spite of itself. It is a collection of (mostly) funny scenes, but ones that don't come together as well as they should. The movie is at its best not in the telling of the main chase, but in exploring what might actually be happening in our homes (or sewers) while we are away and in showing the dynamics between various types of animals. These elements though become secondary to a story that is unworthy of them.
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