Entertaining but hardly ground-breaking.

Rating: 7/10 (22 November 2016)

Watched The Secret Life of Pets last night. A story you could write on a postage stamp but with some genuine laugh out loud moments and some good voice characterisations. It didn't have any of the mawkish sentimentality that some cartoons manage to devolve into and the action barely let up throughout. Not one I'd want to keep (although there's a lot of background stuff going on that might warrant a second or third viewing) but certainly good for a rental. The animation, as you would expect, was superb with the city backgrounds looking stunning and the characters having great expression and movement. One thing does niggle at me though. It was obvious that the screenplay was thrown together using the "draw elements from the hat" method and, while they certainly lead to a few laughs, there were a few points that didn't quite gel with the internal logic of the film. I know it's just a cartoon but still, these things jar and it smacks of lazy writing. What these cartoons do really well, though, is slapstick and there's some great moments of that in this. To sum up: Great for the kids and with a few nice touches for adults to enjoy but not a great deal of substance.