Film of the Week: The Secret Life of Pets 2

This pleasant inoffensive family-friendly film doesn’t go as big as the first film did, but doesn’t go too small either. As a dog owner, and previously a cat owner, whilst they did exaggerate a little with the animal’s mannerisms for comedic effect, the animators were accurate with their representation of both dogs and cats, and their ways of seeing the same situation. It was a joyous, calm watch, calmer than that of the first film, and therefore much easier to digest.

Picking up from the events of the last film and skipping ahead a bit to accommodate Max’s owner’s person development with having a family, we see Max excitedly leap into his next great adventure. This isn’t about exploring the great city; this is about learning not to be so afraid of the big wide world anymore. There is a big climatic scene near the end of the film, when the pets save the white tiger from the circus, but mostly it’s about Max’s new look on the world.

Whilst he’s enjoying himself at the family’s farm, meeting new animals and sniffing new smells, the pets back at the apartment block they have an adventure of their own, but rescuing a tiger from a circus, and trying to find the perfect home for it. The way they storytellers weave each individual stories together for one climatic ending was cleverly subtle.

As a sequel go, it’s not bad. It’s not at all trying to be better than the first, just continuing the story of their lives forward. It’s not just a decent movie, but also a pretty good sequel. If the two films were edited together to make one long film, I wouldn’t be complaining about how it gets boring or trails off somewhere else, but instead just follow the life of a family and their pets.

Overall, it’s a brilliant feel-good family-friendly, pleasant film to sit down and watch on any occasion, either with your family, or on your own, and it’s so inoffensive, it would be offensive to categorise it as a guilty pleasure.

This is the type of film that, no matter the mood you’re in, The Secret Life of Pets 2 will always be there to brighten up your day.