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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Tag (2018)

When I saw the coming attractions for Tag, I knew it would go one of two ways.  It might very well be a buddy comedy where the main characters bond and learn about themselves, all while having a good time.  If not, it would probably be a series of lame jokes held together by a weak plot.  Unfortunately, it tended towards the second one.

The movie starts with Hogan 'Hoagie' Malloy applying to be a janitor, despite being a veterinarian.  It seems strange, but the company really needs the position filled.  Thus, Hogan gets the job.  He only does this to get close to his friend, Bob Callahan, so that Hogan might tag Bob.  You see, it’s May and every May, the five friends get together for the eponymous game of tag.

Hogan wants Bob to leave immediately, despite being in the middle of an interview with a Wall Street Journal reporter, Rebecca Crosby.  Bob finally relents.  Rather than reschedule the interview, Rebecca decides to come along.  Next to be brought into the game is Randy 'Chilli' Cilliano, who is a bit of a stoner.  After that comes Kevin Sable, who’s right in the middle of a therapy session.  They all head back to where they grew up.  The last member of the group lives there.

Jerry has never been tagged.  Never.  Even if you corner him, he finds some impossible way out.  Hogan has told Bob, Randy and Kevin that Jerry will be retiring from the game at the end of the month.  This is their last chance to make him It.  The game is on.

The only complication is that Jerry is getting married to Susan.  The guys are a little hurt that they weren’t invited, but Susan had to have a May wedding and didn’t want the game interfering with that.  There’s also the added pressure of her being pregnant.  The guys agree not to interfere with anything wedding related, which only serves as a plot point.

During the rehearsal dinner, Hogan, Bob, Kevin and Randy make plants to block the exits to the building.  That goes awry when Bob is distracted by a former crush.  This leads to an elaborate chase in the woods that leaves the other three in varying degrees of pain.

There is a message of friendship in the movie, but it gets buried beneath the physical humor.  It isn’t until the latter part of the movie that they have any serious discussion about drifting apart over the years.  Many of the scenes show just how far the group will go for the game and how nothing is sacred.  For instance, Jerry is in AA.  The other four friends think nothing of infiltrating the meeting to tag Jerry.  Jerry eventually locks himself in a room, where he waits for Susan to come and bail him out.  In this scene, she seems to have a miscarriage.  She and Jerry leave, both angry at the others.

That one scene tells me a lot about the movie.  I’m not saying that a movie should shy way from AA or miscarriages.  Instead, either topic should be handled with a certain level of respect.  Both are going to be sensitive topics for those affected by it.  The movie uses both as a way to show how serious the characters are about game.  I felt it was the one scene where the movie stumbled.

I think this is going to be a hit-or-miss movie for a lot of people.  The good thing is that the trailer is representative of the movie.  There were a few things I didn’t expect, but I have to say that I wasn‘t really surprised by anything.  If not for MoviePass, I would not have seen this movie in the theaters.  I probably wouldn’t have even rented it on DVD.  I think I would have waited for it to become available streaming if I saw it at all.

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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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