This young beast is going to the pariah of the moment, the circus. Improbably Daisy, while stowed in the cargo section of an airplane, discovered a shackled white tiger named Hu. New character Daisy, a Shih Tzu, shows up to find Snowball, the rebel leader of the abandoned animals in Pets 1, now reduced to a domestic critter who pretends to be a superhero. The third tale is the most preposterous, and easily the most poorly written, of the bunch. The sequences where she is trained to be a feline and then proceeds into the den of the enemy are among the funniest in the movie. For this, she goes to neighbor Chloe, a tabby cat, to give her lessons. Gidget decides that the only way to get back the bee toy is to pretend to be a cat. Predictably, it falls down the fire escape into an apartment filled with innumerable cats, presided over by the proverbial cat lady. He gives this to his sometime love interest Gidget, a Pomeranian, to guard during his absence. The second story centers around Max’s squeaky bee toy. A pivotal lesson occurs for Max when he has to risk life and limb to save a lamb. Max slowly builds confidence with Rooster as his guide. In what may be a shock for some parents, he advocates letting a child climb a tree even if s/he ends up falling so that s/he can learn not to do that again. When the family ventures to an uncle’s farm, they encounter Rooster, a Welsh sheepdog, who is old and takes guarding his various charges (chickens, pigs, a turkey, and sheep) in stride. He begins to scratch himself obsessively and is taken to the vet, who places a cone around his head. While the other dog Duke, a Newfoundland, is mellow around the child as he matures, Max becomes highly neurotic as he tries to protect Liam from every possible risk. His guardian Katie meets a man and they have a child, Liam. The primary one involves Max the Jack Russell terrier. These all intersect by the end of the film.
The plot involves a patchwork of 3 stories involving characters from the first picture. So this makes the avoidance of addressing issues in the sequel more notable than it would otherwise be.
Some parents who brought their children to see a movie based on the trailers felt that they were misled and were left unprepared to explain to their kids that people do desert their pets and that this is a real-life problem. This did not come without a downside for the filmmakers. Rather than just being a riff on the trailers which showed pets cavorting when their human guardians left, it took on the issue of animal abandonment. I thoroughly enjoyed the first installment in the Secret Life of Pets series. The movie, however, is characterized by lazy storytelling and an avoidance of issues which it presents.
The Secret Life of Pets 2 has some very funny, laugh-out-loud moments and clever animation of new animal characters that will make it a hit with families.
“The Batman”: a long ride for just an okay story.“Alone With You”: Co-Creators Emily Bennett & Justin Brooks.Barbara Crampton on Complicated Horror Characters.“King Knight” Writer/Director Richard Bates Jr.“The Burning Sea” Director John Andreas Andersen.