The Secret Life of Pets 2 Review

People love their pets and Illumination Entertainment realise this with The Secret Life of Pets – making $875.5 million from an average animated film. The production company hopes to repeat the same trick with the sequel.

Since the events of the first film there have been big changes for Max (Patton Oswalt). There’s a new man and child in his life and a new voice actor has taken over Max’s role. Max grows attached to the child, leading to him becoming overprotective and develops an anxiety condition.

Snowball the Rabbit (Kevin Hart) happily lives with a young girl who’s obsessed with superheroes. Snowball gets a chance to prove he’s a hero when a Shih Tzu, Daisy (Tiffany Haddish) ask for help to free a white tiger from the circus.

The Secret Life of Pet 2 is really three separate stories that end up being tied together in the third act. There is Max who has to overcome his fears, Snowball and Daisy saving the tiger, and Gidget the Pomeranian (Jenny Slate) has to learn how to act like a cat so she can retrieve Max’s favourite toy from the home of a crazy cat lady. And due to the sporadic nature of the film The Secret Life of Pets 2 seemed like it was made by people suffering from ADHD.

The film has a running time of 86 minutes with credits which is short, even for an animated film. There was not enough story to fill 90 minutes. There were two fantasy sequences in quick succession which shows how much the film had to pad itself out.

The three storylines would have worked as episodes for a cartoon. They were simple setups that could have been told in five to twenty-five minutes. There the kind of stories that the Looney Toons or Hanna-Barbera short with a similar type of physical type of humour – a healthy amount of visual and physical gags. Plus there is a larger amount of toilet jokes like Mel the Pug (Bobby Moynihan) discovering the treats in the cat litter and Pops the Basset Hound (Dana Carvey) teaching puppies where to relief themselves.

There are some moments that made me chuckle. Gidget’s storyline provided the best jokes and I like Chloe the Cat’s (Lake Bell) aloof attitude – mainly due to my bias towards cat humour. When the cats drive the car for their other elderly owner reminded me of the “Weekend at Dead Cat Lady’s House II” skit from Rick and Morty. Norman the Guinea Pig (Chris Renaud) was also fun, especially when he whizzes around on his remote control car.

Max’s storyline was where the emotional heart lies. He is an overprotective parent who’s trying to save Liam from the big bad world – even if he seems okay. Max needs to let go and as Rooster the Sheepdog (Harrison Ford) states he needs to be brave and let Liam learn from his own mistakes. This is the part of the film where adults can relate with it the most.

The Secret Life of Pet 2 is an inoffensive film that is geared towards children. But the Illumination film lacks the heart or the substance of its competitors at Pixar and Dreamworks.