The Secret Life of Pets 2: A sequel no one asked for

The second installment in the franchise sees Patton Oswalt step in to voice Max, a dog that was voiced by Louis CK in the original film. This means that Oswalt has now voiced a dog and a rat. He is well on his way to completing pet store bingo with his voiceover work.

I don’t even know how to begin to tell you how unnecessary this movie is. First, I don’t remember anything about the first Secret Life of Pets. I don’t remember the story or the characters. I don’t remember if my kids (who are 9 and 7 respectively) liked it. I don’t even remember if I liked it.

The script is a mess. The casting is a who’s who of “we couldn’t afford actual big names” with one notable exception, which we will get to in a minute. This is just a bad movie.

New York is the setting for The Secret Life of Pets 2 and the movie opens with a montage of dogs playing in Central Park set to Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind.” That should tell you about the lack of creativity we’re working with here. There are three storylines going on simultaneously in The Secret Life of Pets 2 and if you are like me, you will forget about each one of them until it is the one on screen. None of them have anything to do with each other and they are all terrible.

Max and Duke (voiced by Modern Family’s Eric Stonestreet) have seen a lot of changes in their lives since the first movie. Their owner Katie is married and has a kid. This has caused Max a lot of stress because he feels like it is his job to make sure the kid stays safe. His vet puts him in a cone to stop him from scratching and biting himself.

As a way for the whole family to relax, Max, Duke and the humans take a trip to visit a farm that is located somewhere that is driving distance from Manhattan, features the train tunnels and pine-topped mountains of Western Ontario, and is owned by a man with an accent straight out of SEC country.

On that farm Max meets Rooster. He is what your uncle who watches nothing but Fox News and talks back to Sean Hannity would be if he were a dog. Also, he is voiced by Harrison Ford because I guess Harrison Ford is in the market for a new plane to crash.

There is also a storyline about Gidget, a poodle voiced by former SNL and Parks & Rec star Jenny Slate losing Max’s favorite toy while he’s out of town. It becomes the property of the cats in the apartment below hers, and this is where the only thing that interested me about this movie comes up.

What are the rules for what animals talk and which ones don’t in this universe? There are cats and dogs who speak English to one another. They can all understand rabbits and hamsters. But these cats who got Max’s toy do not talk and cannot understand the animals that do. It’s never explained why. There is also a bird that hangs out with our main animals who doesn’t speak English, but they can all understand each other. It’s very inconsistent.

Finally, there’s a bunny voiced by Kevin Hart and a tiny dog voiced by Tiffany Haddish trying to rescue a white tiger from a Russian circus. Why? It is wildly unclear, but this is a storyline that involves a full grown tiger and four wolves running wild through the streets of New York City and no one seems to care. Plenty of people see them. No one feels the need to alert animal control or the media.

Sometimes it is fun, even as an adult, to go see animated movies. Moana, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, Coco - there have been a lot of animated movies in the last few years that offered plenty to entertain more than just children. There is absolutely none of that in The Secret Life of Pets 2. My 9-year-old daughter even looked at me at one point in this movie and said “what is happening right now?”

The wine moms sitting behind me though couldn’t get enough of this movie. They didn’t have any kids with them and they recognized some animal they knew or owned in every single character that appeared on screen. I know because they would not shut up the entire time.

Wine moms of the Triangle, I need you to do better. Please feel free to wear your shirts that say things like “It’s wine o’clock,” “Hair’s up, sweats on, wine’s gone,” or my personal favorite, “Mommy Shark: Wine, Wine, Wine, Wine, Wine, Wine, Wine”. Please feel free to drink like fish and not think of it as a problem because it’s fancier than beer. I just need you to be quiet in a settings where we’ve all agreed to be quiet.

This movie, even if you get to experience it without running wine mom commentary, is just plain awful. Thankfully The Secret Life Of Pets 2 is short, so if your kid is hell bent on seeing it you won’t have to suffer too long.