Sunday, June 16, 2019

The Secret Life of Pets 2 - Not Necessarily the Better Sequel but Still a Fun Animated Movie

This was also another movie that premiered in Indonesia only on Friday, but it did not play in the cinema near our home, so my wife and I waited for the weekend to see it for our convenience. We opted to see this at Cinemaxx which had a nice banking promotion, after we saw the other one. We were fortunate to reach the cinema on time before the movie started, with my wife having had to rush to buy the tickets (thanks Hon). Anyway, I would just continue with the movie now.

Brief Story Line

Set after the events in the first movie, the two pet dogs of Max (Patton Oswald - The Circle, Young Adult etc) and Duke (Eric Stonestreet - Modern Family TV series etc) now had a new family member, a toddler named Liam. One day, the whole family including Max and Duke went to a farm where they met with a charismatic sheepdog named Rooster (Harrison Ford - Blade Runner 2049, Patriot Games etc) who was very good in farm life, a total opposite of Max & Duke.


As Max left his home for the holiday, he passed his favorite toy to Gidget (Jenny Slate - Hotel Artemis etc) for her keepsake till he got back home. Meanwhile their other friend Snowball the rabbit (Kevin Hart - Jumanji: Welcome to the JungleCentral Intelligence etc) had it in his mind that he was some kind of superhero and was involved in a rescue mission with a new dog in the neighborhood named Daisy (Tiffany Haddish - Girls Trip, Tuca & Bertie TV series etc).

So what would happen to these pets? Find them all in this fun sequel to that successful movie about pets.

End of Brief Story Line

Well this movie was quite entertaining for me and my wife. It was full of amusing moments due to the craziness of some of the pets' behavior. This time the story shifted their focus to just several of the characters from the first movie. As you could see from the brief story line above, it had 3 different stories related to 5 major characters, with some of the previous pets appeared as supporting cast such as Chloe the cat (voiced by Lake Bell), Norman the guinea pig (voiced by Chris Renaud etc) and many more.

What interest me in the movie was the fact that even though there were 3 stories, in the end the gang had to get back together for one big hoorah. It was fun seeing them cooperate to solve a matter that involved them. And the appearance of the very cute Liam with his lovely relationship with Max and Duke were also the highlight of this movie since he was pictured as a very very adorable young boy.

Another interesting part was the newcomer in this movie, the sheepdog Rooster who was voiced by Harrison Ford (in his first time voice role ever in an animated movie). His voice really suit the character as the commanding dog able to coordinate the herd of farm animals and even provided the much needed guidance to Max who was such a city dog. And the events happening in the farm was quite fun as well. Meanwhile, the story relating to Gidget was the lightest of the three and provided some amusing moments as well. Whereas the story involving Snowball surprisingly was the heavier one. Oh, aside from new characters of Rooster and Daisy, there was also an "evil" circus owner named Sergei (Nick Kroll - Sing etc) who was a villainous character but I thought having too little screen time to really make us hate him.

This time though, the movie did not have as many emotional moments as its predecessor. But the characters were still fun to watch. With their colorful pictures, it surely would be a film fun enough for the children to see, like in the studio we saw this one which was filled with quite a number of those young kids (and I know my wife also enjoyed it a lot by her reaction of laughing out loud during some of the scenes). However, in term of story quality, I personally think the first one was more superior.

There were also some nice music in this film. The animation was wonderful. It had some brief scenes showing real life pets with their owners during the closing credit, plus one very brief moment at the very last of its end credit scene. Oh there was also a bit of amusing mid end credit scene. Unlike in the first film, there was no short movie before the start of this film, only brief funny scene when Illumination was shown.   

Overall this was still quite fun sequel movie about pets, but I think the fist one was a lot more meaningful and a really fresh creative take on pets life during the absence of their owners. This one felt more like a standard animated movie with animals as the lead characters, rather than the story about pets. Sure it was funny looking at their behaviors but the feel of pets' life felt a bit lacking. So if you are looking just for some fun with your family, this one should be satisfying. But do not expect this to be a much better quality sequel than that first film. For me and my wife though, we still enjoyed it and had some fair amount of good laughs.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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