OVERINDULGENT, LIKE OWNERS
The Secret Life Of Pets Running time: 1hr 27min Starring: Ellie Kemper, Jenny Slate, Kevin Hart DIRECTED BY: Chris Renaud,Yarrow Cheney PRODUCED BY: Janet Healy
FETCHING up a new twist on the tried and tested talkinganimal genre, The Secret
Life of Pets explores what happens when we close the front door and leave our dogs, cats and canaries to their own devices.
The answer, as any recent CG animation flick could tell you, is that our pets act a lot like us, with their own petty quibbles, indulgences, love affairs, music tastes and desire to do what they please at all times – although a dog is a dog and will still run after a stick if you throw one in its direction.
That’s at least half the story in this latest comic romp from director Chris Renaud and Illumination Entertainment – the team behind the ultra-successful
Despicable Me and Minions movies – and it’s certainly the more enjoyable part of a film that starts off impressively but gradually tires itself out with a loud and loopy caper plot, taking a clever idea to mostly familiar places in the long run.
Set in a fever-dream version of modern-day Manhattan, the story focuses on a whiny little terrier, Max (Louis CK), whose pitchperfect, apartment-bound lifestyle is upended when his owner comes home with a big floppy rescue named Duke (Eric Stonestreet) and forces them to become housemates.
Unable to accept he’s not the only loved one in town, Max soon finds himself stranded alongside Duke in the Big Apple, pursued by dogcatchers, and crosses paths with an underground resistance known as the Flushed Pets, whose goal is to make all animals undomesticated for good. Their leader, Snowball (Kevin Hart), is the most psychotic furry little wabbit to ever chomp on a carrot, and when he finds out Max is not the stray he claims to be, he brings the ruckus down hard. Renaud dishes out some decent gags during the opening reels, especially when introducing us to the other pets in Max’s building, including a lazy house cat (Lake Bell), an overzealous pug (Bobby Moynihan) and a fluffy Pomeranian (Jenny Slate) who has the hots for our hero. Much of the humour comes from the fact that these animals have human characteristics while remaining adorable, even if not all of them aim to please their caretakers in the way Max always does. But there are many more cast members to come, including a Kvetching Hawk (Albert Brooks), a Cockneyaccented alley cat (Steve Coogan) and a sly old Basset Hound (Dana Carvey) with the most bodacious bachelor pad, to name some characters that wind up crowding the screen for the sake of a few short laughs.
Like the professional dogwalker who can’t exactly keep count of Max and his cohorts, it feels like the film-makers are juggling too many chatty creatures at once, while trying to maintain a plot that tends to grow more outlandish as the story progresses. Occasionally, all the fuss results in a memorable set-piece – such as a digression into a sausage factory that nods to both Grease and a Busby Berkeley musical – but by the time the third act rolls around, the cacophony grows exhausting and the laughs become rarer, especially when all the action-movie antics take over.
On the technical side, there are some marvels here, especially Renaud’s vision of a vertically exuberant New York City, with skyscrapers stretching beyond the frame and fire escapes leading forever upwards into different apartments and different lives, as if we’re seeing everything from the viewpoint of a dog watching the world of humans from the ground.
Likewise, all the details of the furry and feathered cast, including all of the fur itself, are impressively rendered by the Illumination team, who have created a lively and colourful palette that recalls Technicolor films of the 1950s.
The same goes for the score by Alexandre Desplat, which takes notes from Breakfast
at Tiffany’s and other classic Manhattan-set movies, offering up a playful accompaniment to what ultimately feels like a smart but overindulgent exercise in computer-generated puppy love. Or maybe that’s just a pet peeve. – Hollywood Reporter