The Secret Life of Pets (2016)

Director: Yarrow Cheney, Chris Renaud
Writer: Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio, Brian Lynch
Stars: Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet, Kevin Hart

Synopsis: 
Max (Louis C.K.) gets discouraged when his owner brings home a new dog, Duke (Eric Stonestreet), and because of their differences found themselves lost in the middle of New York. And must work together to found their way back home.

Review:
I'm just going to say it. This should have been called Pet Story, because it is the same exact plot of Toy Story. The first trailer released looked like this was just going to be about the title, the Secret Life of Pets, and probably have them actually going around New York and hanging with their friends, but then the more the trailers showed the more I noticed something, this was just going to be telling the story of Toy Story but with pets. And I was a bit sadly right.

Really if this movie's animation wasn't as beautiful as it is, and the characters weren't as great and hilarious as they are, I'd probably say that this was just a bland carbon copy of Toy Story, but the jokes and the animation and the voice acting do help this film out a lot. Kevin Hart's bunny character, Snowball, will probably annoy people depending on how they feel about Kevin Hart's comedy, because all he really does is his yelling type of line delivery, which I enjoy to an extent and was worried that it would get on my nerves, but because of how his character is, a psychotic bunny, I feel like it works well here.

Like I said the characters are all great, and even though I only enjoy some cats and am more of a dog person the cat named Chloe (Lake Bell) stole the show for me with every scene she was in. All the other characters though are great and spot on with their personalities. But the movie did lose points to me for copying off of Toy Story and not doing it's own thing.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5

Recommendation: See it if you're an animal person and don't mind it being a copy cat of Toy Story, but maybe rent it if you enjoyed the first trailer and thought it would be something original.