Featured Blu-ray and DVD Review: The Secret Life of Pets
December 4, 2016
The Secret Life of Pets - Buy from Amazon: DVD, Blu-ray Combo Pack, 3D Combo Pack, or 4K Combo Pack
The Secret Life of Pets is one of the biggest hits of the year and one of the biggest original animated films of all time. That said, strong box office numbers doesn’t mean high quality. Minions earned nearly $300 million more at the box office, but it is strictly for kids. Will The Secret Life of Pets have what it takes to entertain adults as well? Or is it another movie that only kids will enjoy?
We learn from Max, the lead of this story, about the his life with Katie, his owner. They have the perfect life, except she keeps leaving and he doesn’t know why.
Then the trailer plays. Seriously. All of those clips of the cat in the fridge, the wiener dog and the blender, the heavy metal dogs, the bird and the fighter jets, etc. are not from different parts of the movie. They are all here in one stretch. I mentioned in my review of Minions that the movie started very episodically before settling down. The same thing happens here, only it’s shorter, so it’s not a serious issue. It is becoming a pattern for Illumination Entertainment and that’s odd. After the trailer, a bunch of the other pets from the apartment building come over to Max’s place.
The plot begins when Katie returns, but she’s not alone. She’s adopted a new dog, Duke. Unlike Max, who is a Jack Russell Terrier, Duke is a large mutt and Max is instantly put off by his size and slovenly behavior, not to mention having to share the apartment and of course having to share Katie. It’s not like Duke is a great roommate. He immediately steals Max’s bed and the next day he eats all of Max’s food, so Max has a reason to dislike him. He also figures out a way to keep him in check after Duke accidentally breaks a vase. If Max breaks a bunch of stuff, Duke is the one who is going to get blamed.
Max quickly abuses this power over Duke, so much so that the first opportunity Duke gets to ditch Max, he takes it. That opportunity arrives when the dog walker gets distracted before removing Max’s leash. Duke manages to get Max out of the dog park and even throws him into a trash can. The plan would have worked, if not for the alley cats. The cats manage to steal both collars from Max and Duke, so when animal control shows up, there’s no way to prove they are not strays. Worse still, neither the dog walker, nor Max’s friends notice he’s gone when it’s time to go home. It isn’t until they are home and Gidget, the dog that lives across the alley from Max, notices he’s missing that his friends realize that he’s gone. Gidget has a huge crush on Max and decides, with the help of her telenova, that she should save Max. She gets some help along the way, including from Tiberius, a Red Tail Hawk, a.k.a., the bird you actually hear whenever there is a Bald Eagle effect on a TV show or movie.
Meanwhile, the animal control van carrying Max and Duke is intercepted by the Flushed Pets, a group of animals who used to be pets before they were discarded. Now they are forming a revolution to get revenge on all pet owners. They are led by Snowball, a former magician's bunny. He is fanatical and won’t help Max and Duke, because he can smell their domestication. He’s willing to let them burn in the crashed van, until the pair convince him they hate humans as much as he does.
Max and Duke have to play it cool, because Snowball is a lot more dangerous than any amount of alley cats can be.
When it comes to judging kids movies, I use a different scale. After all, I’m not in the target audience, so just saying whether or not I like it will not be that useful. Fortunately, I’ve seen enough kids shows to know when one is working or not. The Secret Life of Pets works well enough that it will entertain most kids and even some parents watching the movie with them.
There are a lot of parts of The Secret Life of Pets that work, including a lot of hectic action. The voice work here is impeccable, especially the supporting cast. Albert Brooks has his second amazing performance of the summer, while it is clear Kevin Hart was born to be a voice actor. Jenny Slate, Dana Carvey, and others are all excellent in the film. Additionally, the film has more heart than most non-Disney releases, and not just in the friendship between Max and Duke. There’s also an important message about abandoned pets.
On the downside, as I mentioned above, the film has an episodic beginning, which is a common issue with Illumination Entertainment films. Also... Toy Story. The basic plot of this movie and Toy Story is way too similar and Toy Story is a much better movie.
The extra that the target audience will enjoy the most are the three Mini-movies. ... They are called shorts. NormanTV is about Norman, the guinea pig stuck in the vents at Max’s apartment. He travels from vent to vent looking in on the humans like he’s channel surfing. Weenie is about ... four minutes too long. Moving on. Mower Minions has the Minions in need of money to buy a blender, so they steal some lawn care equipment and head to the local retirement home to make some money mowing their lawn.
The rest of the extras start with featurettes on the cast and voice actors. Combined they are twelve and a half minutes. Up next is a six-minute featurette with Eric Stonestreet and Kevin Hart getting to play with cute and not so cute animals. Hairstylists to the Dogs is a four-minute look at real-life dog grooming. How to Make an Animated Film is a four-minute making of featurette. Anatomy of a Scene is a five-minute making of featurette. It doesn’t really focus on one scene. The Best of Snowball is just over a minute of Snowball’s best lines. Finally, there is a music video for “Lovely Day” with lyrics.
The Secret Life of Pets is a great kids movie. The vast majority of kids will love it, most parents will have fun watching it with their kids, while many adults who are fans of animation will want to check it out. It’s not top-tier, but that’s hardly a major complaint. The DVD, Blu-ray, etc. are clearly aimed more at kids than adult fans of animation, but if you have kids in the right age range, then it is definitely worth picking up.
Video on Demand
The Movie
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, The Secret Life of Pets, Albert Brooks, Louis C.K., Dana Carvey, Kevin Hart, Ellie Kemper, Chris Renaud, Eric Stonestreet, Jenny Slate