The Secret Life of Pets 4K 2016 Ultra HD 2160p

Residential building in Manhattan. Max's life as a beloved pet is turned upside down when his owner brings home a hairy mongrel named Duke. But they will have to put off their comrades and feuds when they find out that an adorable white rabbit named Snowball is gathering an army of abandoned animals in order to take revenge on all pets and their owners.

The Secret Life of Pets 4K Review
Terrier Max lives happily in New York with his owner Katie. Suddenly, the woman brings home another dog named Duke, and Max's happiness ends. The new pet not only draws the owner's attention to itself, but also pushes Max out of his crib. The terrier responds with the same coin, and the enmity of the pets leads to the fact that they find themselves far from home and without collars. Soon after, Max and Duke fall into the hands of the catchers of stray dogs, but the unlucky dogs are saved by a radical organization of abandoned animals, led by the rabbit Snowball. To flatter their new acquaintances, Max and Duke assure Snowball that they have dealt with their owners and run away from home. Meanwhile, Max's friends in the high-rise building notice the absence of a neighbor and organize a rescue operation.

Finding inspiration in brilliant classics is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you can't learn bad from the masters, and even a weak copy of a masterpiece can give an acceptable result. On the other hand, if the public remembers the creation that you imitate, then the flaws of the clone will be clearly visible, because it will be easy to compare and determine where the master worked and where the journeyman worked.

Appearing in the film's finale, Spitz Gidget's owners are cartoons of comedians Luis S. K. (voice of Max) and Ellen DeGeneres (voice of Dory in Finding Dory)
As you might guess, The Secret Life of Pets is a variation on Toy Story, only with fluffy and feathered pets instead of plastic dolls. Of course, the new cartoon is not an exact copy of the first Pixar masterpiece. The team of the American-French studio Illumination Entertainment, which gave the world the cartoons "Despicable Me" and "Minions", respects themselves too much to mess with competitors and declare the tape an original work. But the plot parallels are quite obvious, and, unfortunately, the 2016 film looks weaker than the picture that started the full-length computer animation.

Snow's story about his deceased comrade-in-arms Ricky is a parody quote from the classic "black" drama "The Boys Next Door". In the original, Snow was voiced by black comedian Kevin Hart
No, The Secret Life's graphics and animation are all right. If cartoons were judged only by the picture, then The Secret Life would claim a high score - although not as high as the score of the stunning Zootopia. But, of course, it would be strange if the real New York was as magical, enchanting and amazing as a fantastic city with several climatic zones. Illumination did a great job of transforming New York into a blooming candy-city metropolis, but the gamble on believability prevented the artists from going further and coming off their best.

Unfortunately, when you move from the picture of "The Secret Life" to its script, the problems of the cartoon immediately catch your eye. If “Toy Story” and similar “buddy-movies” are built around the forced partnership of two colorful and very different heroes who drive each other to white heat until they learn to appreciate their differences, then Max and Duke find themselves, as they say in America, “Brothers from different mothers”. They are not similar in appearance, but behave and think in exactly the same way. Therefore, the dogs turn into a well-coordinated team almost immediately after they get into the binding, and this makes the tape much more boring than it could be if Max and Duke continued to dive. Moreover, such a scenario robs the picture of what should have been its central intrigue. What's the point in a full-length adventure if the characters start behaving like brothers in the first half of the film?

Other characters of The Secret Life also do not demonstrate the scriptwriting skills of the authors of the tape. The picture is so lazy that there are three white and fluffy heroes who turn out to be "tough guys". This is a tiny Snowball, pushed around even by hefty crocodiles, a Spitz neighbor Gidget who is secretly in love with Max, who organizes a rescue expedition and turns out to be a karate master, and an unnamed poodle who adores heavy metal. It was possible to joke like that once, twice - this is already a bit too much, and three times - a frank inflection. In general, the film has much more characters than good ideas associated with them, and this overloads and clutters the production. A potentially entertaining film turns into a hectic flickering of characters, many of whom are included in the script only so that as many dolls as possible can be released based on The Secret Life.

Perhaps the most obvious scenario fiasco of the tape is how it presents its few serious, dramatic scenes. So, at a certain point, Duke tells how he got into a dog shelter, and finds out what happened to his former elderly owner. If it was a scene from a Pixar cartoon, the audience would have been crying in tears from surging feelings. And Illumination presents Duke's story as dry information for note, without causing any emotion. Perhaps director Chris Reno did not want children to cry in the middle of a comedy adventure canvas. But why then even include potentially tear material in the film? After all, it is clear that Duke needs a house and that Max should make room if his mistress wants it.

It's good at least that there is a lot of humor in "The Secret Life" and that among his jokes and gags there are very funny jokes. True, they are designed almost exclusively for kids, and we have already seen the most successful of them in trailers. But coupled with the charm of the tape's graphics and its furry characters, funny jokes make The Secret Life a pleasant, watchable sight. No wonder the picture has already earned more than $ 400 million.