Terrier Max (Patton Oswalt – instead of Louis C.K., who dropped out due to allegations of sexual harassment) and Newfoundland Duke (Eric Stonestreet), already familiar to us from the first part, still live with the girl Katie (Ellie Kemper). However, Katie meets a handsome guy, marries him, and the couple takes and gives birth to a child – these are they, people, scoundrels. At first, the baby constantly harasses the unfortunate Max, but from the moment the child spoke, Max suddenly realized that the child loves him and Duke, so that the happiness of the whole family became cloudless.
However, another misfortune began. Max suddenly began to notice what dangers await the child in our cruel world, began to protect him from everything, became nervous and irritable – as a result, Katie took Max to the veterinarian and a plastic cone was put on his muzzle so that he would concentrate only on what was in front of him. him.
In the summer, Katie went to the farm with her husband, child, and dogs. There, Max will meet the inhabitants of the farm: bad sheep, sarcastic cows and melancholic pigs. True, Max did not find mutual understanding with the hysterical turkey, but the local patriarch, the huge shepherd Cowboy (Harrison Ford), saved the dog from the obsessive bird. After that, Cowboy began teaching Max how to deal with his own fears.
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As you know, the first cartoon “The Secret Life of Pets” was created by Illumination Entertainment, which gave the world the Despicable Me franchise with Gru and very cool minions, the feature film “Minions” and quite a nice cartoon “Sing”.
The first cartoon “Secret Life …” did not have an outstanding script and was quite clearly built according to the patterns of the classic “Toy Story”, only instead of toys there were pets of various levels of character development. For example, the main character Max was, to be honest, nothing, his duet with Duke before Woody with Baz was like the moon, and the cartoon was kept mainly due to secondary characters: the beauty Spitz Gidget, the cynical cat Chloe and the absolutely gorgeous bandit rabbit Snowball. Plus, all this was funny drawn, and with certain disadvantages of the script, the audience was still told a completely integral (“solid”, for some reason corrected by the cat Bagel) story.
The picture, with a budget of $75 million, earned under $900 million, showing an absolutely incredible CCG as much as 12 (from 3 – the picture paid off), so it was clear that new adventures of pets were waiting for us.
Only one of the three screenwriters remained for the sequel – Brian Lynch. Without the past two accomplices, Lynch, apparently, did not dare to use any other plot of the classic cartoon, so he did not find anything better than how to spin three, practically unrelated plots in one picture at once.
With the story “there is a small child in the family who takes out pets,” Lynch coped with coarse grinding in exactly seven and a half minutes. During this time, the child grew up to three or four years old, learned to speak, said to Max: “I love you” – and then Max fell in love with the child terribly and began to worry about him terribly – so that he needed the help of a psychoanalyst veterinarian.
OK. Then the whole family went to the farm, where Max is taught life by a wise old mentor, and here we will do our best not to remember “Cars”, because the analogy is very indirect. But Cowboy failed to teach the life of Max for a long time, because two more storylines were laid.
The second line is Spitz Gidget (Jenny Slate), to whom Max left his favorite toy – a hard worker rubber bee. Why did Max give the bee to Gidget, and not leave it in his completely empty apartment, where the bee was not in danger? Of course, in order for Gidget’s bee to fly out of the window and get into the apartment of the granny cat lady, from there Gidget’s bee had to be rescued from a gang of rabid cats at the risk of her life. Well, the cherry on the bee – after Max’s return, he never remembered the bee, so all Gidget’s heroism somehow passed by, like love.
The third story – the dog Daisy (Tiffany Haddish) turns to the rabbit Snowball for help. Well, more precisely, to his alter ego – a scary fighting Snowball in a superhero costume. By the grace of the screenwriter, Snowball completely forgot that in the last cartoon he was really a super fighting crawl, so now there is nothing cool in him, and he only pretends to be a hero in his stupid suit. At the same time, Daisy herself solves all the problems, which is really cool.
What are their problems? They rescue a white Amur tiger, whom Daisy met in the cargo hold of an airplane during a flight, from cruel circus trainer (Nick Kroll). Don’t ask me what the screenwriter smoked, I can’t tell by eye.
All three lines as such – sucked from the finger, very tense and do not carry any intrigue in themselves. Ah, Max is worried about the child, and the wise Cowboy will teach him not to be afraid. Ah, Gidget lost Max’s toy – horror, horror, you must immediately risk your life and save her, immediately! Ah, we urgently need to save the white tiger, which, generally speaking, it is not clear what to do with – it will blow any house in a moment, a wild animal.
Therefore, with the scenario here – it’s a complete failure. However, the old funny characters are still good here: first of all, the chic cat Chloe (the scene with valerian is excellent), Gidget the Spitz, Mal the pug, Daisy, and Snowball, who lost all his fighting ardor, was nevertheless also cool.
Occasionally, some really good jokes slipped here and there (especially the conversation between the cow and Duke, the wake-up call to Chloe the mistress and where Chloe teaches Gidget to behave like a cat), and because of this, the cartoon, probably, could even be watched, although it was absolutely not necessary – the first The film is much more solid and interesting in my opinion.
However, despite all these claims of Bublik and me, the sequel swept the world more than successfully – $ 407 million in fees with a budget of $ 80 million, although the rating on IMDB is rather average. Well, then, we are waiting for a triquel: Max marries Gidget, they will give birth to the spitz terrier Bootsy, who will be in terrible danger from some goofy cat Pretzel. Will Max be able to save his son, will his son understand what true male friendship is? This question terribly worries the audience.
PS I listened to the United Statesn dubbing. Some of the jokes were lost, the other part was replaced with their own versions – somewhere successfully, somewhere not. Sheepdog Rooster (he has a rooster on his bowl, from there comes a joke with Duke, who Rooster called Chick) for some reason was replaced with a Cowboy. They made a United Statesn Sergey with a characteristic appearance and a condo Slavic accent, a clear stump, Serge – oh, you vile paddling pool, “Peugeot” in your drawbar! But in general, it’s not to say that dubbing greatly spoils the impression, there is an original, let’s face it, there are not enough stars of wit from the sky and the dialogues there are quite simple.
I didn’t like it at all, I wouldn’t waste my time on it. But I watched with the younger Exler – he said that he really liked it. However, there, at the very end of the cartoon, Snowball started rapping, and if someone starts rapping, then the younger Exler cannot dislike this, by definition.
The Secret Life of Pets 2 movie meaning
Director: Chris Reno, Jonathan del Val Cast: Eric Stonestreet, Kevin Hart, Jenny Slate, Lake Bell, Dana Carvey, Bobby Moynahan, Harrison Ford, Patton Oswalt, Tiffany Haddish, Hannibal Buress
Budget: $80 million, Global gross: $407 million
Animation, 86 min.