Mindless and Unoriginal Garbage, A Shameless Rip-off!

Rating: 2/10 (20 July 2016)

It'd be an insult to toddlers to call this film toddler-fodder, that is how pathetically cliché and unoriginal it is. Let's get everything out of the way shall we? The animation was mediocre, the concept utterly banal, the humor non-existent and the depth, well there was no depth.
Yes it is an animated movie primarily aimed at children but are children nowadays so dumb as to accept such mindless drivel, to think this as entertainment? How far the animation standards have fallen or perhaps I should say how far audience intellects have fallen!
The animation quality is so third-rate. You'd think the movie was made years ago. The CG is just awful. There is no intelligent story. In fact there is no story. It is just almost an hour and a half of copy pasted scenes from better movies, highly unoriginal. A C-movie Toy Story with talking animals, lacking the wit, heart, humor and all-age spanning wonder of the Toy Story films. It borrows heavily from many films, not just Toy Story but the likes of Bolt, The Incredible Journey and Homeward Bound, Garfield: The Movie and 101 Dalmatians with snippets of several other films mixed in but less endearing. In fact it is closer to Garfield, almost identical sans a few tweaks. Basically, dog gets jealous of another dog, they get lost, learn to work as a team and happily ever after with other animals trying to help them. The character development is non-existent and the little bit that is there exceeds acceptable clichés. The laughs are practically non- existent. I laughed once or twice at most. The theater-goers laughed once or twice. The minions short before the movie was funnier and more likable than the feature it was preceding.
The only saving grace for this film is the talented voice cast who are utterly wasted.
Let's be honest, this film is a shameless cash-grab. The ads for pet companies and other Illumination Entertainment films within the film are eye-roll inducing. Only the most staunch of pet lovers will adore this because they are clouded by affection for their pets instead of really seeing what a dumb film this is, overlooking how bad it actually is. People like pets, so using that psychology to goad the public is a clever move to create an undeserving blockbuster. I love animals but I dislike idiotic movies whose only purpose is raking in the money! It was beyond juvenile and such a sad waste of potential. It could have been good but unfortunately it was poorly executed in the name of box-office cash-in.
There are better animated movies out there, in fact Illumination Entertainment have made films several times better than this one. Please do yourselves a favor and watch something else because you've probably seen this movie before since it copies so many films already out there.