Imagine if jokes wore boxing gloves and jabbed at your face till you relented. That’s The Secret Life of Pets for you.
Every scene is an opportunity for a gag, and every plot development an excuse for more gags.
There isn’t a single inert moment in the film, which is both good and bad.
First, the bad. It exposes the film’s lack of any serious ambition. The Secret Life of Pets has no great secret to share, no great point to make, and no great story to tell.
However, directors Chris Renaud and Yarrow Cheney seem to be aware of these limitations, and pack the film with jokes. Some of them don’t even make you laugh, but the directors don’t care. They seem happy to evoke a grin here and a smile there. For instance, a dachshund switches on a blender in the absence of its owner, and gives itself a massage. The scene doesn’t matter in the bigger scheme of things, but there is no bigger scheme anyway.
Think of it as a Just for Laughs episode that runs for 98 minutes. The film kicks off with the arrival of Duke (Eric Stonestreet), a rather inconsiderate Newfoundland, into the house of Max (Louis C.K.), a Jack Russell Terrier, who feels insecure and bullied.
Shortly, Max and Duke get lost, and land in the clutches of Animal Control. En route, Snowball (a delightful Kevin Hart), a white rabbit who is up in arms against humankind, rescues them and accepts them into its army of squalor until he realises that Max and Duke won’t quite fit in, as “there’s domestication all over them”.
Meanwhile, there’s a romantic angle in the form of Gidget (Jenny Slate), a white Pomeranian who is so smitten with Max that she leads a team of domesticated pets to rescue him, and hopefully, win his tiny little heart. And so, the story goes on from one place to another without much direction… much like Max himself.
However, there is a lot to like in The Secret Life of Pets , mainly its unabashed attempts at humour. The jokes mainly play to the usual stereotypes associated with dogs and cats: an apathetic cat wryly observes that dog people do weird things, “like getting dogs instead of cats”; Max and Duke make their sad-dog face to get a man to part with his food; a cat doesn’t hesitate to step on a sleeping man’s private parts when scampering across the room; a dog is so happy about the homecoming of the owner that it urinates in excitement. You can’t but chuckle at it all, especially if you’re familiar with the ways of pets.
The movie won’t stay with you for long, but while you’re watching it, it’s impossible to ignore.
My most favourite bit is the running gag: a poodle whose owner is a fan of Western Classical music. Every time the owner steps out of the house, the poodle takes the opportunity to play explosive heavy metal, and headbangs like there’s no tomorrow.
The poodle has no bearing on the film, and isn’t even part of the elaborate main cast. But that’s entirely in keeping with the soul of film, or should I say, the lack of it.
The Secret
Life of Pets
Director: Chris Renaud, Yarrow Cheney
Starring: Kevin Hart, Jenny Slate, Louis C. K., Eric Stonestreet, Lake Bell
Runtime: 98 mins
