Unreview: The Secret Life of Pets — 5 stars

You think you know what your pet’s doing while you’re working

The Secret Life of Pets is, in my opinion, a brilliant madcap piece of work. It would seem at least some critics would not agree with me.

• The first thing a movie must do is entertain me. This movie does that in spades. Check.
• The second thing a movie must do (especially if it is an animated feature) is show me how much its creators loved it.This movie was loved by the people who made it. It is evident in every frame. Check.
• The third thing such a movie must do is have dialogue which can get my attention. I found myself laughing all the way through the movie. Check.

Thus, I refuse to read the critiques given by “professionals” because I found very little to dislike about this very likable movie. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 75% which is a respectable number but it means some critics must have really disliked aspects of it.

I still don’t care. Go see this movie. It is doing well in the theaters and should be getting more attention than it has. It is worth it. Evidently, lots of people agree.

Onward to my Un-Review:

For their fifth fully-animated feature-film collaboration, Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures present The Secret Life of Pets, a comedy about the lives our pets lead after we leave for work or school each day.

No matter what you thought pets might be doing when no one was around didn’t even come close to what is revealed in this movie. I have seen comparisons to the now famous “Zootopia” but they are really two different kinds of animal movies.

Zootopia is a movie about animals if they were more like us. The animals of Zootopia used technology and no Humans were ever part of their world. The animals still retained a bit of wildness about them, just the same. Remember the wolves and their desire to control the urge to howl?

The Secret Life of Pets is a world where animals can communicate with each other speaking an animal-based “common tongue” but they are part of a world where they share it with humanity. As we learn about the pets and their friendships, we come to appreciate their ideas, their perspectives and their complex relationships to each other and their humans.

Despite their shared gift of language, each animal group has its own culture, its own relationship to other animals and depending on how that group defines itself, there is a degree of clannish behavior shown in the three groups we are exposed to: The House Pets, the Flushed Pets (animals discarded by their Human owners) and to a lesser extent, the Alley Cats, a subset of the Flushed Pets.

The story follows two dogs, Max, a terrier and a Duke, presumably a sheepdog of a sort, forced together in a small apartment vying for the attention of their owner. Territoriality gets the better of the two dogs and their battle leads to complications which involve them moving across the city and meeting different animal groups, each group more extreme than the last.

The Secret Life of Pets is visual feast filled with fast paced humor, a loving attention to detail; all the pets have unique physical, aural and personal characteristics which make them stand out. My favorite is the hawk Tiberius, who spends a good portion of the movie trying NOT to eat any of the protagonists, though it clearly pains him to resist helping himself to the bounty which surrounds him. New York City is also a character in this movie. The city is portrayed in a larger than life format, exactly suitable for a story about animals who are more than they appear. As a former New Yorker, it brought a smile to my face.

This movie is a labor of love, there were so many scenes which could have been cut out or reduced in effort but weren’t. These scenes make the movie come to life for me. No animal was too small to promote and everyone had a chance to shine. My favorite scene is on the Brooklyn Bridge when the Flushed Pets were surrounding Max. A car, besieged by tarantulas had them running down its windshield while the parents screamed in horror at the front and the kids squeeing with joy at them as they run up the back of the car.

The voice work is excellent, with Kevin Hart stealing the show as the completely homicidal leader of the Flushed Pets, a snow-white bunny appropriately named Snowball.

The “Pets” voice cast includes Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet, Kevin Hart, Jenny Slate, Ellie Kemper, Lake Bell, Dana Carvey, Hannibal Buress, Bobby Moynihan, Steve Coogan and Albert Brooks. “Despicable Me” helmer Chris Renaud directs and Yarrow Cheney co-directs from a script by Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio and Brian Lynch.

Outstanding work by everyone.

The story is fun and there are subtle homages to animation from previous eras (the Mr. Magoo sequence was priceless). Some of the dialogue kept me in stitches. Dana Carvey as the Dog Father, Pops was simply superb: “When you get to my age, every breath is a cliffhanger…”

After this movie, pet owners will never walk out the door without wondering what their pets might be doing when they’re gone. Ultimately we learn it doesn’t matter, our pets love us far more than we could possibly realize.

The Answer-Man’s Archives are a collection of my articles discussing superheroes and their powers in relationship to their respective universes. We deconstruct characters, memes, profiles and how superheroes relate to real world culture. You can find other Archives on Quora and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Stack Exchange or at The World According to Superheroes.

Quick and Dirty Reviews are exactly what the name implies. I saw it. I liked it. I shared my immediate opinions and kept it moving; so much to write, so little time. You can assume if I took the time to write a review, you might want to take a look at it.

Thaddeus Howze is a writer, essayist, author and professional storyteller for mysterious beings who exist in non-Euclidean realms beyond our understanding.