Secret Life of Pets 2 – Blu-ray Movie Review

This is the sequel to the very popular 2016 release, “The Secret Life of Pets” which highlighted the filmmakers’ fantasy of how pets communicate and act when nobody is home. In this sequel, the protagonist, Max (Patton Oswalt), faces significant life changes after his owner Katie (Ellie Kemper) gets married and has a baby. The plot thickens when family goes on vacation to an upstate farm where Max meets the farm’s alpha dog, Rooster (Harrison Ford). Rooster grudgingly helps Max overcome his fears. Meanwhile, Gidget (Jenny Slate) is trying to rescue Max’s favorite toy from a crazy cat lady’s apartment while Snowball (Kevin Hart) is on a mission to save a white tiger named from a traveling circus.

I saw some pretty harsh reviews of this movie. Many critics declared this movie suitable for little ones only: adults would be bored or disengaged. I think those critics have lost their sense of personal childlike innocence because I’m a middle-aged man and I sort of really loved this movie. It made me laugh out loud and the ending was much more fulfilling than I had expected. The running time is less than 90 minutes yet they seemingly packed in three hours of narrative over a series of parallel story arcs. It was the kind of movie that holds your attention, entertains you, and can draw you in emotionally if you let it. Highly recommended by this critic.

The video quality of this Blu-ray is off the charts good. I would like to award five and a half stars if I could, please. What I am referring to is that this is generally a very bright and colorful movie that pops off the screen maybe better than any Blu-ray I have ever auditioned. There are also some darker indoor and night scenes that are equally accomplished. I don’t think I saw any blatant flaws in the image throughout. This is as much reference-quality 1080p disc as any I can think of.

The audio quality is almost as good as the video quality. The dialog is handled well as are the special effects, especially with the cutting-edge Dolby Atmos encoding. I also enjoyed the music very much which is mostly well presented but leads to the half star deduction – the music’s bass was probably 3 dB higher than it should have been. It left me wanting to turn down subs when the music was playing but then bring it back up for the effects.

This package contains the Blu-ray disc and a DVD. A digital code for download of the film is also included. The on-disc extras are extensive and excellent:

Super Gidget, Minion Scouts, The Making of the Mini-Movies, Deleted Scenes, A Tapestry of a Tail – The Making Of, How to Draw, Frame by Frame – How to Make a Flip Book, Character Pods, My Buddy and Me, The Further Adventures of Captain Snowball, Pets with Jobs – A Documentary, A Party Fit for a Pet, Relax the Cat: The Secret Life of Pet Massage, Pops’ Puppy Training School with Kevin Hart, Production Pets, Pat’s Yule Log, and Lyric Videos.