Entertaining and Beautiful, but Mediocre and Self-Serving

Rating: 6/10 (13 January 2017)

Secret Life of Pets follows, as you can probably guess, the secret life pets have when their owners aren't around. Max is a terrier who's enjoyed all the love and affection he gets from his owner, but everyday when she goes to work, he's left alone, waiting for her return. His fellow pet friends, whose owners have also left for work all come and hang out, including Chloe the cat, Mel the pug, Sweet Pea the budgie, and Gidget the Pomeranian; who lives in the building next door so can only watch from afar. One day Max's owner comes home with a new pet; Duke the Newfoundland, who poses a difficulty to Max's comfort and way of life. What ensues is Max and Duke getting lost in New York City after constantly trying to get rid of each other, and Gidget and the rest of the gang trying to track them down. Along the way they meet Snowball and his sewer-dwelling gang of anti-owners, and Tiberius the predatory eagle, and Pop the disabled basset hound.
Being a family movie, the story of Secret Life of Pets is unsurprisingly formulaic and predictable. Max and Duke constantly try to one-up each other, get lost and into trouble, but learn valuable lessons along the way, accept each other, and are found and return home safe and sound. There's no subtext, there's no twist, there's no complexity. It's a linear story with no surprises and not too much originality. But it's a family movie, they're not exactly known for their top-notch storytelling (not even Disney/Pixar are capable of breaking this).
Secret Life of Pets isn't even particularly new in it's humour. The opening montage that introduces us to all the main characters is probably the movie's high point. Unfortunately this montage was pretty much the whole trailer, so watching the actual movie doesn't improve on that. We see Chloe gorging her face on food, Mel barking at squirrels outside his window, Sweet Pea pretending to fly through canyons on the TV, Buddy scratching himself with a mixer, and of course the poodle that changes the music to System of a Down. The humour from this point on is a little lacking. It's mostly slapstick to appeal to younger minds, and I'm sure it's successful in that regard, but I doubt anyone older than the age of ten will find the image of an aggressive gang leader rabbit pooping himself randomly hilarious.
On the note of Snowball and his gang, I have read some controversy on message boards about how violent this film is, and I can't say I overly disagree. Snowball's gang are quite violent and provide the most threat to Max and his crew, but they're also overtly shown as the antagonists. In my opinion, kids could do with a little more darkness in their movies, so this was welcome, but it still wasn't exactly as scary or dark as movies were when I was younger.
It's a breathtakingly beautiful movie. Between this and Minions, Illumination have demonstrated that they are second to none in creating breathtakingly detailed and photo-realistic vistas. Secret Life of Pets is bursting with vibrant colour and detail in every scene, from gorgeous cityscapes and autumnal colours, to textures of stone, brick and wood that are treated with excruciating detail. I can't state enough how incredibly impressed I was with the imagery in Secret Life of Pets. An opening scene of Max and his owner going for a walk in the park with vibrant autumnal leaves everywhere, and a towering, imposing city full of lights and colours behind was so crisp and clear.
While Secret Life of Pets is absolutely aimed at those with younger minds, the movie is rife with references to other properties that only more experienced viewers will discover. I often found it was a little too heavy-handed in it's references, and maybe a little too self-serving. For instance, the amount of references to Minions and Despicable Me were uncountable. Minions made appearances in almost every scene, Gru can be seen in the background, as well as the unicorn, and the gnome from the Minions short. The love of Universal properties is also rife, including The Tonight Show, and Universal and Illumination's upcoming Sing. But there's others that are a little more thoughtful and subtle, like the sliding turtle taking out enemies in a reference to Super Mario, or a lizard bursting out from a disguise mirroring the chest- burster from Alien, Snowball's revolution against humanity as a homage to Animal Farm, a poster from Hitchcock's The Birds, and an emotional reference to "Ricky" a la Boyz N The Hood.
I know my review of Secret Life of Pets seems awfully scathing, but I did enjoy it in a lowest common denominator way. It's fun, it's entertaining, it's sometimes quite funny, and it's absolutely a visual feast for the eyes. I didn't feel I wasted an hour and a half of my life once the credits rolled, but it is an unremarkable movie. It doesn't try anything new or fresh, it makes no effort to seek longevity or classic status. It's a fleeting time that is mediocre and largely forgettable, made for the sole entertainment of children and nothing else. On that note, I can't call it a failure. But it's not a great movie. It's not a bad movie either, not by any means, but I don't feel not seeing it would result in missing out. I give Secret Life of Pets and enjoyably fleeting experience worthy of a 6/10. I'm sure my four-year old will love it though.