America's funniest pets

The Secret Life of Pets marks the sixth film from Illumination Entertainment, the production company Universal Studios acquired in 2008 to compete in the Pixar era of animation. Three of the first five films were in the popular Despicable Me franchise, while the other two—The Lorax and Hop—were critical failures that, despite making a bit of money, came and went without inspiring much enduring attachment from kids.

While audiences will find some laughs in Secret Life, it’s more likely to go the way of the Lorax than the Minions—making a big initial splash at the box office before fading. This is too bad, because the opening scene demonstrates a great premise with hilarious potential that the rest of the movie never quite lives up to.

One of the few drawbacks about Pixar’s domination of animated film is that it has set a standard for emotional and moral thoughtfulness that, while I’m certainly thankful for it (rare as it is in any genre these days), isn’t necessary for every movie.

From the font of the opening credits to the bright New York set pieces, the aesthetic of Secret Life feels very much like the midcentury odd-couple comedies of Rock Hudson and Doris Day. The humor, albeit with nods to modern gangster culture and plenty of PG potty jokes (this is a movie about dogs and their interests, after all), has that same slapstick, madcap quality.

With the exception of Louis C.K. in the lead role as everydog Max, the animal characters are such over-the-top exaggerations it wouldn’t be difficult to imagine Tony Curtis or Audrey Meadows voicing them in a past era. Instead, we have SNL alum Jenny Slate as Gidget, a soap-opera-obsessed Pomeranian who joins forces with a bloodthirsty hawk (Albert Brooks) and a wheezing, elderly basset hound (Dana Carvey). Together they try to rescue Max from the murderous clutches of a cute, cuddly rabbit (Kevin Hart) who also happens to be the underworld kingpin to a mob of “flushed pets” bent on revenge against the humans who abandoned them. It’s all a little manic, and it works, thanks in large part to Hart, whose hyper, hysterical monologues beg for a film of their own.

Where The Secret Life of Pets fails is in trying to tie a deeper, more meaningful, more Pixar-ish message into a story that is essentially a drawn-out selection from America’s Funniest Home Videos. When new dog Duke (Eric Stonestreet) arrives in Max’s home, their competitiveness for the affection of the human they both love gets them lost. They have to learn to trust each other in order to return to a home they can share. Sure, it’s an admirable theme, and we were all charmed by it the first time, when it was called Toy Story.

That’s not to say familiar, universal plotlines can’t be used again in fresh ways. But the rest of Secret Life’s tone goes in a totally different direction. A tone that includes a hallucinatory interlude of dancing sausages, salami, and hotdogs.

It’s completely weird, completely unexpected, and completely hilarious, exactly what one would expect dogs to hallucinate about. It also illustrates what the rest of the movie could have been had the Illumination producers had the courage of their own vision—which is something like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with dogs. And bipolar bunnies.