The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)

In The Secret Life of Pets, we learned that Max is a very lucky dog to have a home and a human named Katie to care for him.  He’s still lucky.  He has the same home and all and a canine roommate that he learned to get used to.  Things rarely ever stay the same, though.  Max and Duke receive a shock when their human brings home a boyfriend, Chuck.  Chuck becomes Katie’s husband.  Then, Katie becomes pregnant.

Yes, Max is going to have to put up with a rug rat.  After seeing what small children do to other dogs, Max isn’t thrilled.  However, he learns to love Liam.  Max and Duke are like an extra set of parents, doing what they can to help their newest family member.

The trouble is that Max isn’t as good as Duke at handling stress.  Now that Max has to worry about Liam, he sees danger everywhere.  This leads to a nervous habit of scratching his neck, which leads to a visit to the doctor.  And…Max gets The Cone of Shame.

We now have three divergent storylines.  Max, Duke and family go to a farm for a vacation, prompting Max to entrust fellow dog Gidget to watch over his beloved toy, Busy Bee.  Meanwhile, Snowball gets to play hero and rescue a tiger from a circus.  The three stories converge at the end, making for an interesting chase scene.

I’ve been reading complaints about having three story lines.  It’s not that bad.  Each one is at least entertaining and it’s not unusual for a TV show to do the same thing.  (CSI would often have two cases per episode.)  My impression is that the movie was written this way rather than having several otherwise-rejected story lines being merged together.

I could see them having been written as filler.  It’s not clear why Max would need someone to babysit his toy.  It would be more likely that Katie would bring it with them.  That does seem like it’s being done to set up the detour into The Land of the Crazy Cat Lady.  However, that was a pretty epic journey.

Having Snowball save a tiger was also strange.  At this point, circuses are anachronistic.  (Do we even have any traveling circuses any more?)  If I were writing the movie, I probably would have gone with a collector of exotic pets.  It would have made more sense.  It’s also a little odd that the tiger is so docile.  Tigers are wild animals and have been known to attack their captors, even after years or decades in captivity.

It still ends up being a fun movie.  It would seem that many of the errant details are done more for a joke, like having the tiger act like a house cat might.  It’s going to be fun for both kids and adults.  I just wonder how many kids will want a pet tiger.

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The Secret Life of Pets (2016)

Max is a lucky dog and he knows it.  He has a place to live and a human that he loves and that loves him back.  That’s why he’s surprised when his owner, Katie, brings home a new dog, Duke.  Duke seems friendly at first, but eventually takes a liking to his new home…and Max’s bed.  Max is adamantly against this intruder, but this is an animated movie.  While Max and Duke can communicate with each other in English, Katie hears nothing but barking.   Max’s complaints go nowhere.

Max has an idea, though.  He can damage enough of Katie’s vases so that Duke looks bad.  Duke gives in, but has an idea of his own.  He finds a weakness in the fence of a dog park.  It would be simple enough to abandon Max somewhere in the city.  Duke would have the apartment all to himself.  What Duke doesn’t count on is a gang of cats stealing their collars and leaving them for animal control to deal with.

Both dogs are put in the truck with a third dog.  Just when it looks like neither is going home, Snowball comes to the rescue.  Well, to the rescue of the third dog, specifically.  It turns out that Snowball and his cohorts hate humans.  Max and Duke agree with the rhetoric to get Snowball to spring them, as well.  You see, Snowball leads a gang of abandoned pets called The Flushed Pets.  All of the animals had homes until they didn’t.  Snowball, for instance, was a magician’s rabbit until the human found another job, making Snowball unnecessary.  Since many of the other animals would be considered exotic pets, it’s presumable that the others have similar stories.

Back home, Max’s friends band together to rescue Max.  They’re led by Gidget, who seems to have a small crush on Max.  She even enlists the aid of a hawk named Tiberius.  The adventure takes all three parties across Manhattan and Brooklyn.  Max and Duke even search for Duke’s previous owner.

You might wonder why I would give away so much information about a movie.  I think most adults won’t be surprised.  I’m not saying that the movie is formulaic.  It’s just that it does follow a certain pattern that I’ve seen before.  You have one character leading a nice, comfortable life.  That life is disrupted by an unwelcome newcomer who inadvertently sets them off on some wild ride.  There is at least clear threat, usually more, as the two characters face danger at every turn.  (In this case, Max and Duke have to worry about animal control and The Flushed Pets.)   While that adversary isn’t a great threat, there will be one life-threatening, paradigm-shifting situation that will cause the first character and the newcomer to become friends.

The movie is still entertaining.  It’s exactly the kind of movie that would be safe for kids and enjoyable by the parents that have to bring them.  There are a few dangerous situations for the characters.  Max and Duke are faced with the choice of being attacked by The Flushed Pets or a long fall into unclean water.  There are one or two scenes where their lives are in real danger, but it’s a comedy.  There’s no real expectation that Max and Duke won’t go home.  In fact, it’s exactly the kind of ending you could get a sequel out of.  I just hope that this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

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