With
the success that Disney and Pixar have had over the past few decades, rival
companies have spawned their own animation companies to try and take in the big
bucks as well. Since 1998, Dreamworks has been their strongest foe, especially
since they were the ones to win the first Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Blue
Sky, while did an excellent job with “The Peanuts Movie,” are still treading
behind, relying too heavily on the “Ice Age” franchise in order to stay
relevant.
This leads us to
Illumination Entertainment, the CG animation studio owned by Universal, which
gave us the “Despicable Me” franchise, allowing the studio to get a good spot
in the animated film market. Some have turned out good, but they’ve also turned
out a couple duds too. Last year, they gave us “Minions,” a prequel spin-off
that, while not a terrible film, suffered from a flawed story, paper thin
characters, and jokes that overstayed their welcome, especially with the
marketing fatigue it gave me. Despite this, the film was a huge success,
grossing over $1 billion at the box office, and Illumination followed these
steps once again, with “The Secret Life of Pets.”
The film centers on a dog
named Max, who absolutely loves his relationship with his owner, Katie. When
Katie brings home a big dog, named Duke, this upsets Max, leading to him and
Duke to a rivalry that leads to the two of them losing
their collars, and going on a crazy adventure through New York, all while
getting chased by animal control and rejected pets who live in the sewers.
Let me start off by
saying the animation is really damn good. It’s got nice popping colors, it’s
fast paced, the scenery is gorgeous, and with it being a film about pets, each
of the characters designs and little quirks do differ from one another. What
really set Illumination on the map was how well they do their animation and how
a lot of what you see is pretty sharp. The visual gags are especially well
detailed, giving off of the feel of a Warner Bros cartoon from the Golden Age. That,
and the soundtrack composed by Alexandre Desplant is excellent. Every scene has
a nice tune to mix well with the mood, allowing the tone to really settle in.
Some of the side
characters were enjoyable to watch. Each of them have their own little quirks, some moments to shine, and they do manage to get a decent laugh out
of me. My favorite side character was Tiberius, a hawk that the Pomeranian dog,
Gidget, befriends in the film. From his ominous introduction scene, he managed
to get the most laughs out of me, especially with his running gag about trying
to eat other critters, but restraining himself in the background, mostly by
Gidget’s offer of friendship. That, and the way Albert Brooks delivered his
lines added to the fun of this character, giving him a sinister but playful
tone. The more I think about it, it makes me wish he played Kaa in “The Jungle
Book (2016)” instead.
I also thought the voice
acting was pretty good, as all of the cast members do a fairly good job, delivering these lines like it was actually from the characters, instead of thinking it was from an actor in a booth.
Jenny Slate as Gidget, Albert Brooks as Tiberius, Bobby Moynihan as Mel the
pug, Dana Carvey as Pops, the paralyzed old hound, Lake Bell as Chloe the fat
cat, Hannibal Buress as Buddy, the wiener dog, Steve Coogan as a sphynx cat,
and even veteran voice actress, Tara Strong, as Sweet Pea the parakeet, all did
a good job with these characters. Hell, we even get cameos from Laraine Newman
and John Kassir as two different owners, so that was pretty cool.
Despite this, the rest of
the film doesn’t sit very well. While the side characters do have their moments, they’re very few and far between, and the
rest of the time with them isn’t that interesting. It’s kind of like throwing darts: sometimes
you’ll get closer to the center, but other times you won’t even hit the board
at all. That, and there were some moments of quick convenience that come out of
nowhere, especially in the third act, where suddenly Gidget comes to the
rescue, while the other side characters idly stand by. This brought up the
question, was the really a purpose to having these characters tag along with
Gidget? Hell, Tiberious and Pops are the only ones that truly served a purpose
to helping her out in the entire film.
You might have noticed
that I’ve put a lot of focus on the side characters, and that’s because the
main storyline with Max and Duke is the worst part about the movie. For starters,
the plot is about one character loving his relationship with his guardian, and
then another character comes into their lives, the two don’t get along, get
lost, and have to find their way back home. If this sounds familiar, it should,
because it’s a rip-off of “Toy Story,” only with pets. Sure, there have been
other stories like this that have done the whole “two characters get lost and
learn to get along while on this journey” trope before, but “Toy Story” is the
example I’m going to go with. The biggest difference I got out of this was that
while Woody and Buzz started off being jerks to one another, it wasn’t
malicious or anything like that, and they established that a good amount of time had passed for this jealousy to develop. That, and the two still managed to be likable
throughout the course of the film. The only time things went overboard is when
Buzz got knocked out the window, but even then it was done by accident. With
Max and Duke, not only was their rivalry immediate and completely full of enmity, but neither
of them were likable to watch. Whenever these two showed back up on screen, I
didn’t care what happened to either of them, even if they had scenes of getting
along, like in their sausage party (yeah, that happens), or trying to get
sympathy out of the other, like with Duke’s backstory. I’ll give credit to
Louis C.K. and Eric Stonestreet for trying to make them watchable to their best
advantage, but with the way the script portrays them, as far as I’m concerned,
they both deserve to be put down.
As for the villainous
rabbit, Snowball…look, I have nothing against Kevin Hart, okay? I’m sure he’s a
nice guy in real life, and from some of the stand-up I’ve seen him do, he can
be really funny. But man, this character was just boring to sit through. All he
does is act crazy and scream, that’s it. There’s nothing that really stands out
as an actual joke, aside from that running gag where he shouts out to his comrade
who passed away, and it pans over to the friend’s picture. While he is more
watchable than Max and Duke, I still did not give a shit about him.
Overall, I don’t recommend
this movie. In fact, I’m going to go as far as to say this is Illumination’s
worst film. Despite the occasional funny moments with the side characters, great
animation and score, the rest of the film just brings it down to the point
where it falls flat on its ass and doesn’t bother to get up. It’s not the
worst animated film I’ve seen this year *coughAngryBirdscough*, but that’s not
really saying much. If you liked it, more power to you; as for me, it’s very
lackluster.
Rating: 3/10
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