The Secret Life of Pets 2 Review

It's "Dark Phoenix" vs. "The Secret Life of Pets 2" at the box office this weekend and I'm throwing a bit of an audible at people by getting my review of the kids movie out first rather than jumping into our latest superhero movie from the extremely inconsistent X-Men franchise. Now when it comes to predicting box office totals, I've learned to trust in Illumination. They've been extremely consistent in putting out big hits even when no one expects it. They've now made nine movies prior to "The Secret Life of Pets 2," with the average domestic total of those nine being $272 million. Looking specifically at their most recent six, that average goes up to $313 million, with the lowest grossing of the bunch being "Despicable Me 3" with $264 million. That consistent stream of success is pretty much unparalleled at the moment. Yeah, Pixar has their movies like "Incredibles 2" and "Finding Dory" that make all the money in the world, but then they have misses like "The Good Dinosaur" and "Cars 3" mixed in to balance things out to the point that the average of their last six films only barely beats Illumination with $323 million. Meanwhile, Walt Disney Animation Studios' last six films average out to $267 million, which is significantly lower than the Illumination average.

I bring these numbers up for two reasons. First, I find the box office numbers fascinating and I find it interesting that Illumination is keeping up with Disney and Pixar financially, while even doing better in certain aspects. Maybe there are a few of you out there that would be interested, too. Second, out of all the success that Illumination has had, especially with their "Despicable Me" franchise, their biggest film domestically is "The Secret Life of Pets," which beat out "Despicable Me 2" by a mere $323,065. Worldwide "Minions" is their biggest film by a long shot as that made $1.159 billion, but here domestically I think it's crazy how huge "The Secret Life of Pets" was. When I reviewed that movie, I told people to skip it in theaters and save it for DVD because there were a lot better options for families at the time. Apparently no listened to me. Now as for the financial prospects for this sequel, Universal may have picked an awful release date for their latest Illumination film as it's sandwiched directly between "Aladdin" and "Toy Story 4," the former of which is outperforming expectations by a long shot, while the latter of which broke Fandango pre-sale records for an animated film. Thus if "The Secret Life of Pets 2" breaks Illumination's streak of success... good.

In regards to "The Secret Life of Pets," I referenced my review of it in the previous paragraph of it simply because I just barely went back and re-read that review. Because I couldn't remember the specifics of why I didn't like it. That's a problem in my book. I watched it. I didn't like it. I reviewed it. Then it completely left my mind as this thing that's only useful to distract your kids when you need it to. So I had to remind myself before going into the second one that I didn't like it because it was such a huge rip-off of "Toy Story" that I was rather annoyed. Yeah, sure, your 5-year-old isn't going to care about that. But I did. And it was more than just a rip-off in concept, being a movie about what your pets do when you're gone. The whole plot was nearly beat for beat to "Toy Story," but with pets instead of kids. Thus while the movie was technically an original film in terms of it not being a sequel or based off previous material, it was one of the most unoriginal and lazy films I've seen. So I obviously didn't have much hope for this sequel, but maybe they could pull it off? Their advertising campaign was fairly clever as they released a whole bunch of character trailers that were pretty funny. And a movie about pets should be cute enough to give a pass, so maybe this could be a better than the first?

My biggest problem going in, though, is that I had no idea what the plot of this movie was going to be. Yeah, the little two to three minute gags with all the various characters were pretty funny. I was especially amused by the idea of Harrison Ford as a grumpy old farm dog. But what was this movie? How are they going to connect everything they've been selling into a cohesive plot? Because certainly they weren't going to release a giant pile of nothing, right? Animal gags are funny, but only to a certain extent. I need there to be a movie to go along with my movie or else I would just stay home and watch cat videos on YouTube for free. I just assumed that they were hiding the plot because they thought focusing on funny animal gags would be a good way to sell their movie. Given how huge the first movie was, focusing heavily on all the likable characters might not be such a bad idea. But yet as I sat there in a Friday afternoon matinee show, purposely buying a ticket at a time where there might be plenty of kids there with me so that I can gauge their reaction, I became rather shocked as I slowly started to witness that there was no movie to this movie. All of those character trailers that I didn't think had much plot were the plot. I kept waiting for the movie to begin. But it never did.

Because of this, I almost don't know what to say here. So let me tell you all the directions this does go. Our main dog Max narrates the intro, telling us that his owner got married and have a child. He hates kids, but he learns to love HIS kid. One day, the five of them (three humans and two pets - the other dog being Duke, the Buzz Lightyear of the first movie), go on a trip to an uncle's place, who owns a ranch out in the middle of nowhere. Before the trip, Max leaves his favorite toy with an energetic female dog named Gidget, who later loses it in an apartment full of creepy cats owned by the resident old cat lady. So Gidget gets help from her other cat friend who teaches her how to be a cat. In the meantime, Snowball the bunny, voiced by Kevin Hart, thinks he's a superhero because his owner dresses him up like a superhero. While Gidget is training to be a cat, another cat named Daisy comes in to find Snowball because there is an evil circus dude who has trapped a baby tiger. Daisy and Snowball go off to save the tiger. And of course we jump back plenty of times to Max and Duke's adventures with all the new animals on the ranch. All these storylines eventually connect together, but until then it's just a bunch of random happenings to all of the pets with no real focus.

To the first movie's credit, even though the storyline was a huge rip-off of "Toy Story" ripoff, at least it had a story. There's a cohesive direction that the plot takes that your kids can follow and enjoy for some harmless fun. Because, again, they're not going to care about an unoriginal plot. But the fact that this sequel had nothing to it made it so that there was nothing for me to latch onto and care about. There wasn't even much of a message to this movie outside a forced on bit at the end with Max telling us that life takes us in many unexpected directions and we have to be ready for it. Thus I was sitting here watching this movie and the biggest thing that came to me was what am I doing here? Why did I go see this movie? I had to argue with myself a bit, reminded myself that reviewing movies is what I do. And sometimes I enjoy watching all the kids movies so that I can give recommendations to my siblings as to which movies their kids would love the most. But outside that, would anyone care if I skipped this one? If I would've walked out of the theater and not reviewed this movie, would there be anyone disappointed that I didn't write a review for "The Secret Life of Pets 2"? Now that the deed is done and the review is being written, is anyone even going to read this?

I suppose I could come up with a few more reasons as to why watching this thing was worth my time. I need more candidates for my worst of the year list in January. I do like ranking movies from the major animation studios. I've done so with Pixar and Disney. I'm planning on ranking DreamWorks and Studio Ghibili sometime soon. So maybe once Illumination has a big enough catalog of films and I've ranked all the others, I might do so with them? But yeah, mostly this is me grasping at straws. I guess deep down I was hoping for a cute movie about pets because the concept is good enough. But given that I didn't enjoy the first movie, I'm not at all surprised that I didn't enjoy the second movie. There's just nothing to this. There's good voice work. Good characters. Some individual moments that were funny. Harrison Ford was a romp. But as a movie, there's not much of a movie to this movie. If your kids loved the first movie, they'll be entertained by this sequel. And a gag-filled movie with an ADD plot can be beneficial in distracting kids when you need it. But if you're going to spend money for a family trip to the theater, go see "Aladdin," "Toy Story 4" or "The Lion King." Let Disney take all your money. Save this one for DVD or Netflix. My grade for "The Secret Life of Pets 2" is a 5/10.