The Secret Life of Pets

It’s fitting that The Secret Life of Pets opens with a Taylor Swift song. No offense to any Swifties out there, but her songs are pure pop. While they are listenable, catchy ear-worms, they probably won’t end up in the Great American Songbook. I love pop music and pop movies, but there is something inherently disposable about them. They’re meant to be entertaining in the moment but often lack the depth or weight necessary to stick around for the long haul.

It’s appropriate that The Secret Life of Pets begins with a pop song because it is a pop film to say the least. It’s filled with cheap puns, bathroom humor, and a loose, lazy plot that make it entertaining for the ninety minutes you and your kids are watching it. But then you walk out the theater and forget you ever saw it. Like gum that has lost its flavor or that Megan Trainor song you’ve heard sixty five times too many, you’re over it pretty fast.

The plot, as other critics have pointed out, is basically a retread of the first Toy Story film. Instead of Woody, the favorite toy being displaced by Buzz Lightyear and the two of them bickering their way into getting lost together, we have Max, the favorite dog who gets displaced by Duke, a newly adopted dog, and what do you know? They bicker their way into getting lost in the streets of New York.

They encounter street criminal cats, a subterranean gang of abandoned pets led by a homicidal bunny rabbit, and the continuing threat of animal control agents who look like they escaped from the Joe Dirt sequel. Simultaneously, Gidget, the cute Pomeranian from across the way with a crush on Max, rallies their mutual friends and leads a search and rescue mission to find her missing would-be boyfriend.

Besides the simple rehash of the plot, the other two elements that struck me with their lack of being striking were the voicework and character design. I’m a big fan of voice work in general – cartoons, commercials, radio – I think the human voice is one of the most powerful and versatile tools in the world. When an actor is properly cast and has the right talent, a voice becomes a character unto itself. It’s inspiring. But a miscast voice is more likely to be distracting or just plain boring. The comedian Louie C.K. plays Max and while C.K. is a brilliant social critic and comic as well as a talented if slightly limited live actor, his flat affectless voice is terrible for animation. You could fit his vocal emotional range through a drinking straw. Duke is played by Eric Stonestreet of TV’s Modern Family. His performance is so streaky and uncertain, it’s unclear if he just couldn’t decide what kind of character Duke was or if he recorded his lines months and months apart. There are other, very talented voice actors in the film including Jenny Slate and Albert Brooks, but the pedestrian script just doesn’t give them much to do. Albert Brooks as Marlin, Nemo’s dad, can evoke tears and laughter. As Tiberias, the red tailed hawk, the best he gets is a tired half grin.

The character design is equally uninspired. The different breeds of dogs are all recognizable as dogs but none of them are memorable or distinctive in any way. They are all the visual equivalent of Louie C.K.’s voice – present but unimpressive.

Even in summer when going to the theater is a good way to get out of the heat and occupy the kids for a while, I still think a film should be worth the price of a ticket. It shouldn’t be something that you’ll forget the moment you walk out of the theater. Unfortunately, uninspired forgetability is the most memorable thing about The Secret Life of Pets.