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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Despicable Me (2010)

Sometimes, the coming attractions tell everything about the movies.  Sometimes, they leave out details.  When I saw the coming attractions for Despicable Me, I got that it was about an evil genius, Gru, who has three girls come to live with him.  I wasn’t sure how the children came into his custody, though.  I think I had assumed that there was some clerical error or that he was a long-lost relative or something.

The truth is that Gru has big plans.  When one of the pyramids in Giza goes missing, Gru realizes that he needs to up his game.  He has stolen a few minor things, like the Jumbotron and a few Las Vegas landmarks.  Nothing as big as a pyramid, though.  He’s not getting any younger, so he decides to do the biggest heist he can think of:  Steal the moon.

He has Dr. Nefario working for him and a lot of the yellow Minions on payroll.  You assume that he’s supporting his organization somehow.  He’ll still need a loan from Evil Bank, but the loan officer wants some sort of proof of his ability to carry out the heist, like having the shrink ray that he needs.  Gru tries to steal it, but is unsuccessful.  Vector is the one who gets away with the device, leaving Gru to try to break in to Vector’s fortress.  He fails until he realizes that he may have a way in.

He notices that three girls are able to get in to sell him cookies.  All he has to do is get some cookie robots in and he can get the shrink ray.  He adopts the three girls and promptly starts ignoring them.  All he needs is for them to deliver the little robots.  Once that’s done, he’ll ditch the girls and promptly start forgetting about them.  As you might expect, ditching them isn’t that easy, to say nothing of forgetting about them.

For adults that don’t like animated movies, I have a short list of movies in mind to recommend.  The hope is that it might be able to change someone’s mind.  This movie isn’t going on that list.  It’s enjoyable, yes.  This might be something I’d recommend once you’ve come to like the films.  I don’t know that it’s necessarily going to bring anyone around.

This isn’t a movie that you think hard about or that has any strong message.  You look at movies like Zootopia and you can tell that there are messages that aren’t meant for children.  Usually, it’s the message.  (Zootopia takes on racism in a somewhat blunt fashion.)  Here, the only part of Despicable Me that I would deem too much for children is one of the girls getting trapped in a coffin with nails in it and ostensibly being hurt.  Of course, being more of a comedy, she‘s not injured.

There are a few references, like the Evil Bank formerly having been Lehman Brothers, that adults will get.  However, it’s one of those family movies where family skews more towards the younger members.  Much of it comes off as a little silly, like the Minions talking in gibberish that Gru and Dr. Nefario being able to understand.  It’s the kind of thing that’s almost safe to show in school, although not quite.  It does have its fair share of cartoon violence, like Gru being hit with a few dozen missiles and surviving when he shouldn’t.

I had rented this movie to decide if I wanted to rent the rest of the franchise.  I may wait for it to become available streaming.  I don’t have plans to rush to see the third movie, especially since I haven’t seen the second yet.  There is also the Minions movie, which I may check out.  (It looks like there’s a Minions 2 expected in 2020.)  I’ll have to see how the other movies turn out.

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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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