‘Secret Life of Pets 2’ returns to the crazy adventures our furry friends can get into

Posted on June 14, 2019

By MARK VIOLA

Who doesn’t wonder what their pets are up to when we are not at home? The answer to that age-old question was the premise of the 2016 animated film “The Secret Life of Pets.” Well, at least for the first 10 minutes or so of the movie, before the story turned into a mad-cap adventure across New York City that was essentially a re-telling of the first “Toy Story” movie, only with dogs instead of sentient toys.

The film was enjoyable, but not really the story the trailers had promised. Now we have “The Secret Life of Pets 2,” once again following the misadventures of the pets living in a Manhattan apartment complex.

Having learned to mistrust the series’ trailers, I wasn’t sure what to expect when the marketing campaign for the sequel consists of mostly unrelated character trailers for the primary animals, including Max (Patton Oswalt, “Agents of SHIELD,” replacing Louis CK), Snowball (Kevin Hart), Gidget (Jenny Slate) and Chloe (Lake Bell). It turns out that I should have paid more attention, because the majority of “The Secret Life of Pets 2” is a series of unrelated stories that just happen to meet up at the end.

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