The Secret Life of Pets 2 Review

The Secret Life of Pets 2 is directed by Chris Renaud, and features an all star voice cast that incudes  Patton Oswalt, Kevin Hart, Jenney Slate, Lake Bell, Tiffany Haddish, Dana Carvey and Harrison Ford. Plus many more.

The film revolves around Max the terrier adjusting to several new changes in his life that have occurred since the end of the first film, while some of  the other pets get into situations of their own.

This film has unfortunately no standout performances and they all feel of an average standard. There are moments where the likes of Hart and Ford shine briefly in their roles, but there is no denying that, animal or human, live action or animation, the actors would choose to portray their characters exactly same way.

The film was written by Bryan Lynch and I must admit I was very impressed with the script. The three acts are structured very well; you can feel where one ends and another begins, also the comedy dialogue and slapstick have seen some areas of improvement but are still carried out with the same high energy that made the first one so enjoyable. And most importantly some characters get what I felt was a good amount of development.

This film is of course an Illumination production and is animated in their signature style. And the animation is just fine, everything is very bright and colourful as always. The characters' expressions are mostly quite clear. It's interesting to look at certain things like New York City and how that's been animated. But the downside of it is that there has been little improvement on it since the last film this company released just under two years ago.

The score was composed by Alexandre Desplat who of course composed the music for the first one, and here the score felt as if he just took the most exciting aspects of the first one and made one or two slight changes. You can even feel the lack of effort that was put into this, even if the score is something you're not paying that much attention to. I can barely remember any parts of  the score from the film itself but I do have clear memories of music from the trailers that I saw. Clearly there is an issue when the music used in a film's marketing is more memorable than the music in the final product.   

The one flaw that damaged my viewing experience is this: near the end of the film, a subplot and the main plot clash somewhat and I felt that it caused the film to drag on a bit, especially for a film that is just over an hour and a half long, and the sublot was already going on longer than it needed to. I didn't understand any of this. Why did those two particular things need to come together? Why is what was meant to be a small side story taking so long to resolve? Aren't subplots meant to stay on their own and not negatively effect the main plot of the film? In this case, however, this one did and I was not impressed.

The conclusions I draw from this are that Secret Life of Pets 2 has average voice acting performances, with good moments from certain actors; a surprisingly good script that was well-structured and had improved on what was well liked from the first; average animation with very few things that are interesting to look; and a score that feels like it has slightly updated material from its predecessor. And of course, the subplot flaw that I really did not expect to find in an animated kids' film.

Having taken all my pros and cons into account, I'm going to give The Secret Life of Pets 2...
B-

Thank you for reading.