It is grating, and feels like the laziest means to generate conflict. As the two struggle to adjust to the living arrangements, both dogs come off as insensitive jerks. The basic plot of The Secret Life of Pets focuses around a forced conflict between the main protagonist, a terrier named Max (Louis C.K.) and the new dog that his owner Katie brings home, Duke (Eric Stonestreet). Still, The Secret Life of Pets does enough right to avoid leaving a poor taste in one’s mouth, but will never be considered a peer of the more expert-crafted animated films from this year. We’re left with something between a mess of isolated skits and a fully-formed linear narrative, and it is difficult to pull a coherent theme from the film beyond, “friendship is good”. It is rarely (if ever) clear who is the villain and whether they will stay that way, and this leads to incredibly haphazard storytelling. Once it actually gets going, the narrative pulls the audience in too many directions at once. And they are still probably the best part of the whole movie. But, it is disappointing that the best part of the movie was entirely revealed in the trailer - the teaser trailer! That’s right, those 2+ minutes that introduced us to The Secret Life of Pets function as the cold open of the film, unchanged. It even avoids the over-reliance on pop culture reference to get chuckles out of the tag-a-long parents who are invariably forced into the seats in the theater. The movie is a cut above the slapstick-and-farts formula of the most childish entries (I am looking at you, Ice Age 5). The Secret Life of Pets, from Illumination Entertainment, occupies a strange space in the world of animated films.
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