Rather than Buzz Lightyear, Max’s owner, and modern day Olive Oyl, Katie (Ellie Kemper), brings home a shaggy brown rescue dog named Duke (Eric Stonestreet). Max feels threatened by a new canine arrival in his owner’s New York City apartment. (a choice that adds more to the character by association). Like Toy Story, The Secret Life of Pets follows a top dog, here embodied by Max, a floppy-eared terrier of white and brown, voiced by Louis C.K. And for the inspired first few minutes of the movie, we see this secret world on display however, most of these moments were already shown in the trailers, whereas everything that follows is a lot less interesting. Once humans aren’t around, pets drop their well-behaved pretense and inhabit their own microcosm, just as Woody and the gang did when Andy left his room. Illumination’s longtime writers Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio teamed with Minions screenwriter Brian Lynch to conceive an idea closely tied to Pixar’s Toy Story, at least in its initial concept. Not that The Secret Life of Pets isn’t diverting and occasionally funny or cute, but the result lacks distinctiveness and creativity, standing as nothing more than an animated bauble.

Co-directors Chris Renaud and Yarrow Cheney take what could have been an effortlessly simple idea and, in typical Illumination fashion (they’re the studio behind Despicable Me and Minions), dumb down the material for the lowest common denominator. Although it takes place in a world where humans own pets (as opposed to a Disney-esque world like Zootopia, in which talking animals fill human roles), the movie explores, for a while anyway, what our dogs, cats, and other pets are up to when people aren’t around. Many pet owners create voices for their domesticated animals, and here’s a movie in which pets speak in those voices, behaving in ways only humans could imagine for them. In The Secret Life of Pets, Illumination Entertainment preys on those of us with a penchant for anthropomorphizing our furry friends.

Secret life of pets movie full movie