movie review
The Secret Life of Pets 2
Starring: Patton Oswalt, Eric Stonestreet, Kevin Hart, Jenny Slate, Tiffany Haddish, Lake Bell, Nick Kroll, Dana Carvey, Ellie Kemper, Chris Renaud, Hannibal Buress, Bobby Moynihan, and Harrison Ford
Directed by: Chris Renaud
Tagline: They still have their secrets.
The financial success of a movie pretty much guarantees that a sequel will eventually pop up, as the studios eagerly try to milk any and every cash cow they can lay their hands on. But not all films actually merit or deserve a sequel. The Secret Life of Pets, for instance, clearly didn’t.
The 2016 animated adventure – a peek at what pets get up to when their owners aren’t home – was no masterpiece, but it did rake in a lot of money. Illumination unsurprisingly decided to give the film a follow-up, even though it seems like they really didn’t have a coherent plot for the sequel.
The Secret Life of Pets 2 puts together a handful of uninspired subplots and tries to pass them off as a feature film.
Dogs Max (voiced by Patton Oswalt, replacing the disgraced Louis C.K. who voiced the character in the original) and Duke (Eric Stonestreet) – whose owner, Katie (Ellie Kemper), has married and had a child, Liam – go on a road trip to a farm where a tough sheepdog, Rooster (Harrison Ford), helps Max overcome his fears.
Meanwhile … Max’s friend Gidget (Jenny Slate) loses Max’s favourite toy, Busy Bee, and has to infiltrate a group of felines by pretending to be a cat – after receiving training from tabby Chloe (Lake Bell) – in order to get the toy back.
Meanwhile, meanwhile … rabbit Snowball (Kevin Hart), who thinks he is a superhero, helps Shih Tzu Daisy (Tiffany Haddish) rescue a mistreated tiger, Hu, from a travelling circus.
The characters go off on their own for much of the film, each of their subplots keeping them occupied in their separate arcs for far too long. The result is a disjointed, uneven movie that feels like it is struggling to find a reason to exist.
Some of its detours work better than others. The standout here is Chloe training Gidget to be cat-like; it isn’t executed with the level of competence and spark that would make it an instant classic, but the segment actually manages to deliver a few laughs.
There is some cuteness and charm as well as some zany antics, and of course there are a couple of (clumsily delivered) lessons to be learned along the way, but it’s a mix that will only manage to entertain very young children. The movie isn’t clever enough to strike a chord with an even slightly older demographic, let alone the parents of said youngsters who have probably experienced the same ideas delivered through far superior vehicles, like Pixar’s Finding Nemo and the Toy Story franchise, for instance.
The film’s energetic, spirited voice cast does seem to be trying their best to bring some joy to the proceedings, but there isn’t much they can do with an unexciting script burdened with standard, dull plot points.
The Secret Life of Pets 2 is about as unnecessary as a sequel can get. The film plays like a group of shorts forced together into a one and a half hour movie, each segment akin to an episode of a television cartoon show. Focusing on any one of its treads might have yielded better results. It’s so disappointing to see Illumination trying to build uncreative franchises instead of exploring newer, more inspired ideas. Both the talent involved with this project and its audience deserve better than this.
Rating: 2 out of 5
- Sameen Amer
The Express Tribune Blog - 24th June, 2019 *
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