Mini Family-Friendly Movie Review: The Secret Life of Pets
In case you need reminding, I work with kids a lot. Sometimes I watch movies with the kids I work with.
My current charge is a six-year-old who has a very specific taste in movies and TV shows, but in the time I’ve known him most of the content he’s enjoyed has been stuff I’m already pretty familiar with- the Toy Story quadrilogy (did I just make up that word?), the Ghostbusters franchise, the Despicable Me films, and, of course, Spongebob Squarepants. On the rare occasions when we do watch movie or TV together, he always asks me if I’ve seen what we’re watching before. For all the aforementioned content, my answer was always yes.
Yesterday we had a movie day, and he picked out The Secret Life of Pets, a movie from the creators of Despicable Me that came out in the summer of 2016, a four-month period which, coincidentally, is the longest period of my life that I was neither a child nor working with children, which explains how I missed it.
Before I continue with my brief reflections, I think it is important that I disclose that I know personally one of the screenwriters of The Secret Life of Pets, Cinco Paul. He was my high school improv coach! So I cannot claim that this is a fully unbiased review.
That being said, I did have a delightful afternoon with the kiddo watching this movie. The concept is pretty simple- it’s really just Toy Story with pets. Max (Louis C.K.) is perturbed when his human Katie (Ellie Kemper) brings home another dog, Duke (Eric Stonestreet). While out with their dog-walker, Max and Duke somewhat accidentally escape, go on a series of misadventures on the streets of New York City, and the neighborhood pets have to band together to find their friends and bring them back home. They encounter a cast of zany characters along the way, from a street gang of stray cats to underground revolutionary abandoned pets, and learn a lot about themselves and teamwork before successfully finding themselves back in their apartment.
Like many successful pieces of family-friendly entertainment, The Secret Life of Pets caters to a young audience with an easy to understand plot, cute characters, sight gags, and zany situations. For the grown-ups, there’s a star-studded voice cast, including Kevin Hart as a crazed white rabbit, Jenny Slate as a Pomeranian in love with Max, and Dana Carvey as Pops, an elderly Bassett hound with a doggy wheelchair who helps lead the pets on their adventure to rescue Max and Duke. Unlike movies like The Cat in the Hat, The Secret Life of Pets doesn’t utilize thinly veiled crude humor that feels inappropriate and out of place to appeal to adult audience members, but rather showcases the things that are inherently funny about animals as well as a few inexplicable cultural references- for example, at one point Max and Duke break into a sausage factory and get basically drunk on sausages and hallucinate a full, sausage-filled musical number to “We Go Together” from Grease. I am not ashamed to say I laughed very hard during the sausage musical. It was delightful.
While it’s no Toy Story, The Secret Life of Pets is a good time you don’t feel bad about showing kids and doesn’t make your brain melt a little a bit as an adult. I genuinely enjoyed watching it the other afternoon, and the kid plans on showing me the sequel as soon as possible, and I’m not even dreading it! If you’re looking for a movie you might have missed to share with the kids in your life as our indoor days drag on for the foreseeable future, I recommend giving The Secret Life of Pets a shot.