A Cheerful, Harmless & Family-Friendly Distraction

Rating: Null/10 (6 January 2017)

From the creators of Despicable Me, The Secret Life of Pets is another barely serviceable feature film to come out from Illumination Studios' canon following their billion dollar-grossing & insufferably pathetic Minions and although it caters well to the needs of its target audience, it remains a highly generic & downright mediocre adventure comedy.
Taking place in a Manhattan apartment building, the story of The Secret Life of Pets follows a terrier whose perfect life is uprooted when his owner brings another dog into the house. Although unable to get along at first, the two are compelled to put their differences aside after discovering a sinister plot put together by a horde of lost or abandoned pets.
Directed by Chris Renaud & Yarrow Cheney, the movie opens with a brief segment that showcases what pets do once their owners have left for work and it is genuinely funny. The animation is rich & colourful, characters are brilliantly designed & rendered, and it offers a heathy dose of amusement with its fluffy humour but the laughs are usually present in moments that are trivial to its plot.
There are moments that are hilarious as hell while it is barely moving on other occasions. Plenty of characters occupy the screen over the course of its runtime but not a single one of them exhibit an interesting enough arc. The voice actors do well with what they're given, pacing is never an issue, camera-work is finely carried out and it is nicely supported by Alexandre Desplat's gleeful score.
On an overall scale, The Secret Life of Pets offers a passable family-friendly entertainment and at times exhibits clever use of wit but there is absolutely nothing about it that makes it stand out from the crowd. A slight improvement over Illuminated Entertainment's billion dollar-grossing, headache inducing Minions, it offers a cheerful, harmless & amusing distraction that's meant to be forgotten the moment it ends.