The Secret Life of Pets 2 Parent Guide

If you’re the doting owner of a “fur baby”, you might not want to watch The Secret Life of Pets 2. The antics these animals get up to during the day are enough to prevent any pet owner from ever leaving home again.

The film opens with Max (voiced by Patton Oswalt), the lovable and mildly neurotic star of the prequel. Max’s anxiety really takes off when his owner marries and has a baby, giving Max a consuming need to protect the infant from all dangers, real or imagined. Max’s owner takes him to the vet, where he is fitted with a “cone of shame” to stop his stress-induced compulsive scratching. (The scene in the waiting room is one of the funniest in the movie.) And then, when the family heads off for a family vacation to a farm, Max is forced to confront a whole new set of potential dangers.

Max isn’t alone in a perilous world…his fellow apartment dwellers are facing their own challenges. Gidget (voiced by Jenny Slate), the fluffy neighbor dog, who has been entrusted with Max’s beloved chew toy, manages to drop it down the fire escape. To her horror, it lands in an apartment owned by a crazy cat lady. The resident horde of cats hiss menacingly when Gidget tries to retrieve it. So, she turns to Chloe (voiced by Lake Bell), a sardonic neighboring feline, and asks for instruction in The Way of the Cat. Watching Chloe train Gidget to masquerade as a cat is another laugh out loud scene in the film

As if juggling two plots isn’t enough, this production adds a third, which is probably one too many for young viewers. Snowball the rabbit (voiced loudly and irritatingly by Kevin Hart) is convinced he is a superhero and gets recruited by Daisy (voiced by Tiffany Haddish) to rescue a lion cub from a circus where he is being mistreated. And this plot is where the movie goes over the cliff. I assumed this movie was aimed at young children, but there is far too much violence in this plot for kids. The owner of the circus (voiced by Nick Kroll) whips the tiger, shoots him with a tranquilizer gun, threatens him with a revolver and a taser, repeatedly vows to turn animals into coats or rugs, and sets wolves on other animals. His security monkey throws knives at Snowball, flips him on the ground, and chases him with flaming torches. Add in a chase on the roof of a train and a man being run into by a car (twice) and this film is far too violent for the younger audience it’s aimed at.

And that’s unfortunate because the first two plots are entertaining. Gidget’s feline masquerade and her mission to reclaim the chew toy are lots of fun. But the top story is the one centering around Max – and it’s the one with the best message for nervous or fearful young viewers. While on the farm, Max is awed by the farm dog, known as Rooster and perfectly voiced by Harrison Ford. As Max tries to earn the respect of the laconic senior canine, he discovers that it’s better to face real challenges and learn from them than to run from every disaster scenario he can imagine. As he says, “You never know what life is going to throw at you. You have two choices: run from it or run at it.” Ironically, The Secret Life of Pets contains too much violent content for the young viewers who need to hear that message.