American animation by the numbers. Certainly, hasn't the genre always been that way? But there's a lack of ambition in The Secret Life of Pets that betrays its unfortunate adherence to formula, its identity as a product merely of our times and not for our times, and its contentment with that. It's a cash-grab, made by people who likely know better, as evidenced by the simple fact that The Secret Life of Pets isn't a complete failure. It's intermittently funny, never intelligent, spoilt by ugly design though elevated by excellent application of Illumination Entertainment's animation skills. It remains a major disappointment to me, witnessing such superb technique wasted on such average visual concepts. To dismiss this as 'what the kids want' might seem appropriate, but it overlooks a sad, significant point: this is what the adults want too. People are stupid, and want stupid things; The Secret Life of Pets is a rather stupid thing tailor-made for a stupid audience. It's no less than adequate at any particular juncture, though given the amount of time, effort and money obviously poured into this project, adequacy alone becomes inadequate, and the more discerning viewer pines for something more substantial. If all that Illumination has ever before offered in that regard is mere sporadic inspiration on the comic front, surely it's not unreasonable to request it of them again? But this Toy Story rip-off only rarely hints at stepping up to answer this request, content instead to roll ever onward from one mediocre moment to another.
Funny how your opinions can change. Or, funny how you let them change, for legitimate reasons or not. I tend to forget, in the time between watching Minion movies, what my opinion on them actually is; indeed, rather than forget, I allow myself to be swayed by the opinions of others, and corroborate this information with my own, very British, distaste of anything and everything brash, successful and culturally ubiquitous. But this is not my opinion, alas, and I suspect your eyes scroll through this article not for the opinions of others, but for my own. And my own opinion is that, fuck it, I like the Minions. Every time I watch a Minion movie, they make me laugh. Now, Mower Minions is a mere mini-Minion movie among many, and, in spite of its brevity, it's unfortunately obliged to do more than make me laugh. And this it does not. A solid, moderately successful comic skit in essence, the makers of this short film neglect to identify not the necessity of cultivating its chief attributes but the inadequacy of everything else herein. The human characters in Illumination Entertainment's world aren't getting any less irritating, the aesthetic design remains crude and unattractive, the score is obnoxious and simplistic. And you're wondering, now, why on Earth I've developed such a detailed critique of a children's short film - well, it's just my opinion. A children's movie is a movie like any other when filtered through my mind, the mind of an adult. And at least I find them funny - any other adult might have dealt up an even more critical critique.
