The Secret Life of Pets 2016
Illumination Studios, who made Despicable Me, released this movie and Sing in 2016. Both got decent reviews and I almost bought them on Blu-ray, but instead was able to buy cheap digital copies first. Sing was okay, but I hoped that a movie about dogs might be more to my liking. Though the story isn’t that great here, there are some good characters and some neat scenes plus some good 3D animation, even if it doesn’t all hold together. The plot is pretty familiar from Toy Story where friendly rivals get lost and try to get back to their owner. I liked most of the characters and Louis C.K. has a great voice for animation, but a rabbit, voiced by Kevin Hart, was terrible. Another major character, voiced by Eric Stonestreet of Modern Family, sounded nothing like him (though he puts on a gay voice for the TV show). And a lot of the voices sound familiar, but are not necessarily big names, except sometimes they are because it also has Steve Coogan, Dana Carvey, and Albert Brooks. I have watched making of segments for a number of Disney and Pixar movies and the stars want to do an accent or a funny voice and have to be told that they were picked because of their voice and should do the readings as themselves (the studios could get a lot cheaper actors to put on a funny voice). I don’t think that happened here. I enjoyed the parts of the movie where pets and people interact or the story is mostly about that relationship, but the adventure stuff, while it keeps things moving, isn’t that great and the writing often isn’t that sharp. New York City makes a great computer animated setting and having a bunch of different animals works well too, but it needs more creative effort.
Written: 27 Apr 2018
Owned on: Digital