The pet jokes still work, especially when Lake Bell takes charge. The scattered adventures are less rewarding, leaving an amiable family comedy that should have spent longer on the animals’ everyday absurdities.
The Secret Life of Pets 2 is an agreeable but piecemeal family comedy, funniest when it remembers that watching animals behave badly can be entertainment enough. Director Chris Renaud and writer Brian Lynch divide the action between separate adventures, with too little reason for them to belong in the same film. The pet jokes retain some affection and a welcome lack of dignity. The effort to turn them into something more substantial is less successful.
Max’s overprotectiveness gives the film its most promising subject, because worry about someone smaller and more vulnerable is a feeling adults can recognise without explanation. Patton Oswalt makes that worry sympathetic, while Harrison Ford supplies an enjoyably gruff Rooster. Their exchanges work as comedy, helped by the contrast between the two performances. Yet the farm dog’s brisk advice about fear is too easily presented as an answer, and the film seems impatient with a problem it has asked us to take seriously.
Lake Bell’s Chloe is better served by the modest scale of a disguise lesson, where the pleasure comes from animal behaviour being treated as something that can be taught. We laughed at the seriousness of that lesson; passing as another animal is an absurd business to approach with such authority. Jenny Slate also gives Gidget some appealing comic determination. Here the voice performances and the physical jokes work together, and the scene needs little surrounding fuss.
Kevin Hart’s Snowball brings plenty of energy, though the white-tiger circus adventure makes that energy feel increasingly indiscriminate. The action asks for the attention of a larger adventure without providing much reason to care about its complications. The cast can make an individual exchange lively, but cannot supply the connections Brian Lynch’s script leaves thin. There is nothing wrong with silliness; the difficulty comes when changing storylines keeps interrupting the bits that are working.
Colin Stimpson’s production design is bright and legible enough to let a physical joke register without a struggle. The animation has a pleasing elasticity, and the slapstick is easier to enjoy than the busier adventure material. Alexandre Desplat’s music keeps the mood buoyant without making the jumps between stories feel much less abrupt. The film looks comfortable with its silliness, which helps when the plotting becomes laborious.
Editor Tiffany Hillkurtz keeps the individual episodes moving, and the 86-minute running time is a sensible limit for material this slight. Even so, the constant need to leave one set of animals and pick up another becomes tiring before the film has much chance to become dull. A longer stretch in which a joke or a relationship could develop would have helped. There is enough personality in the voice cast to sustain a scene without another burst of activity.
The standard for this sort of family animation need not be an elaborate plot or a lesson for the parents. A few well-observed habits and a sustained comic situation would do nicely, and the smaller scenes suggest Chris Renaud knows it. There are enough amiable laughs here for an undemanding evening with an animal-loving child. Go for those, and be prepared to lose interest whenever the circus takes over.
