Pets: A Vida Secreta dos Bichos

... it's not a classic. Has a nice family feel to it and kids will like it, but unlike some recent animations doesn't have much for adults. The gangsta rabbit is quite funny, and I wish that Claudia the fat cat had more lines as there was scope to develop that character a bit more. The plot is pretty thin but there again you don't really expect a lot more from this type of film. I quite liked it but was also a little disappointed - it was so hyped and unfortunately didn't really live up to it. I could watch Happy Feet and Shrek all day but I wouldn't want to sit through this again. But all in all it is what it is. It's aimed at children and they will enjoy it - my grandchildren aged 7 and 10 certainly did.

With the animation genre in such a golden age, more and more studios are starting to drop their name into the mix.

The latest one is Illumination Entertainment. After starting really well with Despicable Me, it has seemed to have made OK flicks such as Hop, The Lorax, Despicable Me 2 and Minions.

Now we have what many people are hyping as their best feature since Despicable Me, in the form The Secret Life Of Pets. The marketing has been pretty good and trailer suggests a good time at the cinema.

For me, I was pretty satisfied with what I saw. The first third of the film was its strongest part. It was introducing the characters well, there were some solid laughs and they were setting up the story nicely. However the longer the film went on, the slightly sillier it was getting. It was starting to lose its feet, and the gags were getting a bit too much. Thankfully, it was not that bad at all on the whole. It was still moving a long nicely, the characters were being solidly developed and the story rounded off pretty well. I think it might have peaked too soon and everything else felt inferior.

The voice performances were good. Jenny Slate continues to do well in her voice work and I felt she gave the strongest performance. Kevin Hart played his character really well, and had some nice laughs. Louis C.K. was well cast as the lead and gave us a character you could root for. The rest did their job well. They were not good enough to be memorable, but not bad enough to be negatively criticised.

On the technical side, the animation looked really nice and fitted the tone well. The action was entertaining if not a bit over the top at times. The character designs were strong, and I can see them being sold well as merchandise.

Overall, some of it felt disappointing. But on the whole I had a fairly good time watching this. It is definitely the studio's best film since Despicable Me. But with so many other animation studios delivering much stronger films at the moment, this could be forgotten sooner than you think. This might not do as well in the box office as originally expected. Especially a new Pixar film on the way.

There is also a short before the main film, and it features the studios most famous characters. It was o.k. But nowhere near as strong as Pixar's shorts.

Not a great film, but a very enjoyable one.

Starting with 'The Secret Life of Pets', while much of the story is charming, beautifully paced without feeling rushed and entertaining, it does run out of steam in the final third where it does drag a bit and feels overstretched.

While the lead characters are likable and interesting, there are too many characters, which are not as fleshed out and some of them not in the film enough to make impact, and the film feels over-populated as a result.

And while a vast majority of the film is incredibly entertaining, not all the jokes work in the final third, being not as well-timed and being a bit too obvious and childish.

However, 'The Secret Life of Pets' is beautifully and vibrantly animated, love the rich colours, meticulously rich backgrounds and the well-modelled character designs. The music score is whimsical and lively.

'The Secret Life of Pets' is also very wittily and often hilariously scripted, some of the best lines coming from Snowball, and there are some neat references to 'Grease', 'Saturday Night Fever' and 'Some Like it Hot.' As said, much of the story is charming with enough of the entertainment factor.

Lastly the voice acting is pretty terrific, Kevin Hart, Albert Brooks and Steve Coogan coming off best.

Overall, there is much to enjoy in 'The Secret Life of Pets', though it is more a good film than a great one. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Fun fact: I met the universe of movie critics with The Secret Life of Pets. It was 2018, I was on holidays, my dog was hospitalised (she has been neutered), and I had nothing to do. So, I logged in Netflix, and watched this film. After that, "coincidentally", YouTube recommended me a review of this film. The guy was charismatic, and coincidentally, I went to the theatre to watch Aquaman on that same weekend. And obviously, after the session. I went back to that guy's channel (Otávio Ugá, from Super Oito, who's my favourite movie critic until today). After that, I started to follow cinema tirelessly.

Okay, this is a movie review, not a life story. And writing this text is something similar with what I did when I wrote my review of Interstellar. No influence of great memories or movie critics. And surprisingly, my opinion here didn't go as down as Nolan's film. I honestly think this movie is still good.

Yes, it's a Toy Story "rip-off"; yes, some of the jokes have aged badly; and yes, the screenplay is generic and lacks polish; but the characters are still charismatic, 70 to 80% of the jokes still work, and the soundtrack is spectacular (Alexandre Desplat, I can't expect less from a two-time Academy Award winner).

It's a simplistic argument, I know that, but I can't disagree, and I used it to talk about MicMacs, Jackass, and even Thor: Ragnarok; as The Secret Life of Pets is a comedy, its primary objective is being funny, and WOW, it's hilarious. Jenny Slate is an incredible voice actress, as I said before, I can't imagine another actor but Eric Stonestreet as Duke, Albert Brooks, Dana Carvey, Lake Bell and Hannibal Buress (Chloe and Buddy are fantastic) are also excellent, and I changed my mind about Louis CK. I used to not like his job as Max, as I still prefer the voice from the second film, but he fits the Jack Russell more than I thought (also, I don't see him anymore as a coadjuvant of his own story).

And now, an opinion that goes against the majority. All non-Brazilian reviews I've seen have slammed Kevin Hart's job as Snowball, the psycho bunny. To my mind, he's by far the best character. He has the best arc, the script knows exactly how to work with him, Kevin Hart's performance is passionate, and I still think he deserves a solo film.

I can't not recommend this movie. It's far from perfect, it's even far from great, but if you don't have anything to do and need a comedy of quality to pass the time, The Secret Life of Pets is a nice afternoon session, and it's another movie that I'm finally in peace with.

Kids movies continue to swarm into the theaters, and Hollywood's trailer editors have been hard at work baiting us in. With Disney owning the box office this summer, Illumination Entertainment (the creators of Despicable Me) are taking a shot at the box office run. This weekend we got The Secret Life Of Pets, a movie that has been highly anticipated since it's trailer debut from so long ago. It was indeed a very entertaining trailer, but we all know how trailers can be deceptive now don't we? So I have headed into the trenches again to report on the latest film to hit the silver screen.

The GOOD • Cute/Kid Friendly • Funny • Good animation

When you watch, or for many rewatch, the trailers you most likely saw the characters as cute, cuddly animals doing hilarious things. Good news! The trailer is accurate this time and provides the cute factor you expected (including the very scenes you saw in the trailer). All of the characters are adorable, the main ones being bouncy, fluffy, high-spirited animals that will make you want to say Awwwwww. Our design team found a way to maximize all the cute features of an animal and sell it to the families that will lead to merchandising. Even animals you wouldn't think cute (like snakes, gators, and lizards) get the cuddly personifications. Hopefully you have gathered from this, that the design is kid friendly and will have your little ones enamored.

But cute is only the hook, what keeps the interest going in this film? The answer is the comedy of course. The stunts the animals pull are entertaining and the dialogue itself had me chuckling at many of the media references. Voice acting only helps sell the comedy more, especially Kevin Hart and all his high pitched screaming. Your kids though will be the ones to enjoy the comedy the most though, as it is slapstick, simplistic antics with digital pets. Running into walls, making funny faces, or going to the bathroom on the floor are just some of the things you will see that had toddlers chuckling in their seats.

And a small bonus, that really shouldn't be a surprise, is that the animation is good. Illumination Entertainment certainly has their anatomy and physiology down being able to superimpose human qualities while still maintaining there animal qualities. Glad to know that our animation studios are still able to produce great works. If only they could have put that effort into the next few qualities.

THE BAD • The Story • Lack of Uniqueness • Trailers showed you a lot of the movie

With the comedy and animation being the obvious focus, you have to wonder how the story fared in this movie. Unfortunately…it didn't fare that well. Oh it's not that bad at all, but the problem is that it lacks anything memorable or emotionally driving for me. The writers crammed a lot of plots into a short 90 minutes run time, and the resulting production was a very rushed, shallow tale with little development. A split focus resulted in little emotional build-up, and there was no intriguing qualities to keep my attention on any of the cast. And the goal they were trying to achieve was very limited and didn't really set any time limit or urgency to the tale.

To add more fuel to that fire, The Secret Life of Pets wasn't really that unique of a movie. We've had talking pet movies before, where anthropomorphic animals traverse a city or town that often involves a very extreme villain (think Oliver and Company or Homeward Bound). Those tales stick home because they had edge, depth, and moments that stick out in your mind. Not the case with this movie, as again there was no drive to make our pets grow, develop, or even go through much struggle at all. It doesn't have any twists to mix things up either, and therefore leaves little to spoilt. In addition, much of the movie, including a lot of the funny parts, is revealed in the three trailers out and therefore you can save yourself some major bucks by just rewatching all of the trailers. Yeah, I know that is definitely a disappointing factor.

The Verdict

The Secret Life Of Pets is exactly what the trailer promises, fun, entertaining, and wildly adorable. Younger audience members, as well as those very young at heart, are the target group for this movie hands down. It has the laugh factor certainly, and the cast of characters are a motley crew that I certainly enjoyed. However, the story is very simplistic, the lack of emotional suspense, and that much of the movie is told in the trailers make this movie not the most memorable of the summer. I can't say it is worth a trip to the theater in comparison to some of the other kid movies, but it makes for a good family outing.

My scores are:

Animation/Comedy/Family: 7.5-8.0 Movie Overall: 7.0