- Released: June 7, 2019
- Directed by: Chris Renaud, Jonathan del Val
- Running time: 1 h 26 min
- Rating 3/5
Synopsis
My Thoughts
Okay, so, fun fact, I have a completely false memory of actually doing an Movie Thoughts on the first movie. Like I definitely watched it in the time I have been doing Movie Thoughts (back on the original Tumblr blog before I moved to Blogger) and I remember writing a post on it somewhere, but it apparently wasn't a fully fledged review because I can neither find it on this blog and the (now private) original Tumblr blog.
So whatever I wrote on it must've been a brief section in one of my old (now-cancelled) Monthly Movies posts on the old blog, or maybe it was a review I once wrote on Letterboxd. Or both. Or neither. I don't remember to be honest. Case in point: I have definitely seen the first and now am reviewing the second. Oh, and for a brief recap of my thoughts on the first: I didn't like it. It was too painfully average for me to care and like so many others have said, it really did just feel like Toy Story but with dogs instead of toys.
So in this sequel movie Max and Duke are now friends and some time has passed. Their owner has met a husband and they now have a young kid, whom Max is dedicated to protecting. But his nervousness and tendency to see doom in even the best scenarios is getting to him. During a trip to a farm where Max meets a brave shepherd dog, he learns to face his fears. This then comes into play later as it turns out the pet squad back in New York has been trying to free an abused white tiger from a cruel circus. Max, Duke and the other pets now work must work together in order to save the tiger.
Okay, so, an okay plot, but I have some problems. I will say upfront that I did like this sequel better than the original movie. The old is still not that original, but I liked the characters and story better overall. But that aside...first of all, the two plots feel largely disconnected at first. Like, they really do feel like two separate units before finally coming together during the climax.
Which is fine, but I wish that Max overcoming his fears and the other pets trying to free Hu the tiger would've meshed together a bit more and a bit earlier. Because right now it feels like two very disconnected things suddenly coming together. Max doesn't even have a personal connection to Hu as he came into the rescue plot very late, it's really Daisy and some of the other pets like Snowball and Gidget who had more stakes in the tiger subplot as they were the ones desperately trying to save him. Max just kinda comes in much later.
There's also some weird inconsistencies with what animals can talk and which cannot in this film. So it's stated that the pets cannot communicate with Hu because he's a wild animal, and wild animals apparently speak a different language than the pets. Sergei's monkey can't talk, either, so it checks out. Almost. Because for whatever reason there's a wolf pack in this, and the wolves talk just normal English and can communicate with the main cast? And it's never explained why? Like, if you're going to bring up the fact that pets cannot speak to wild animals (even when tame), at least keep it consistent? Either have the wolves not talk, or gives us some plot reason why they can (which we're not given here). Maybe because they're so closely related to dogs or they bothered to learn for whatever reason. But right now it just feels inconsistent.
I'm also not sure if I'm a big fan of the conclusion of the white tiger becoming a pet for the old cat lady. I mean, I get it, I know it's a cartoon, but at someone who is vehemently anti exotic-pet I'm not sure if I like the message this is sending. Fiction to a certain extent does affect reality and I really don't want a bunch of impressionable children walking away from this movie thinking that keeping a tiger as a pet is okay. How is that tiger even going to be happy in a tiny New York apartment with no enrichment or even enough space to properly live. Wouldn't the conclusion to bring him to a zoo or rescue or whatnot been much more logical? But I guess for the sake of a cheap crazy cat lady joke we shove him into this tiny apartment. Maybe I'm just overreacting but I'm not a huge fan of this conclusion.
Also, something else I briefly have to bring up: Duke, despite being a huge factor in the first movie, really feels more like an afterthought here. Like he barely participates in the main plot, he's just there in the background mostly and has a few extra lines but he doesn't feel like an actual deuteragonist or tritagonist like you'd expect him to be after the first film. Not that I mind much, I don't care about Duke as a character, but it's definitely noteworthy that after all the buildup from the first movie he's now reduced to (mostly) an afterthought.
But despite these gripes, I did enjoy this movie more than the last. I liked Max more, I liked some of the other characters more (most notably Daisy, Rooster, the wolves and Hu) and I had no trouble staying invested (unlike with the first, which was kind of a snorefest). It's still far from perfect and I won't go out of my way to recommend it, but I had a decent time watching it. Not the worst outing by Illumination, but far from their best, either.
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