"Cryptozoo" feels like a throwback to the late 1970s or early '80s -- an animated movie that is very much adult in tone and content, presenting a story that is both fanciful and cutting. There's lots of violence and nudity, though leavened with an environmental/moral message, making the whole enterprise seem like a more enlightened version of "Heavy Metal."
The story, set in the late 1960s, is about the world hiding multitudes of cryptids, or mythological creatures, that various factions of humanity want to exploit or help. Some of the cryptids are dangerous and beastly, others very human-like and intelligent. They're constantly in danger of being discovered, captured and sold into servitude.
There are mammoth scorpions, tiny imp-like critters, a South American snake as big as a skyscraper, figures with no head but a face on their torso, unicorns, pegasi, dragons and cryptids that are just dancing balls of light.
The film features voices by some name actors including Lake Bell, Michael Cera, Zoe Kazan and Peter Stormare. Written and directed by Dash Shaw, it features an animation team led by Jane Samborski. At first glance, the animation (largely hand-drawn, I believe) may seem to lack the sharpness and polish of what we've become used to, possibly even bordering an amateurish.
Movies like “The Secret Life of Pets 2” are a perfect fit with home video, because they’re the sort of thing that kids will love and parents can use to buy themselves 86 minutes of precious free time.
I didn’t much care for either the first CGI animation film or this sequel, which basically takes the “Toy Story” concept and applies it to doggies, cats and a few other pet varieties. It’s a look at the adventures they have while we leave them at home.
Max, the Jack Russell Terrier voiced by Patton Oswalt, is more or less the protagonist, though Kevin Hart puts in a challenge as Snowball, an excitable rabbit who dresses like a superhero and starts to imagine he is one, too. Each goes off on their own adventure through the big city, with a third story thread headlined by Gidget, the snooty Pomeranian voiced by Jenny Slater.
I won’t belabor you with a plot summary, other than to say there’s a lot of chases, slightly scary encounters with some tough circus animals and more than a little gastrointestinal humor.
It’s middle-of-the-road moviemaking expressly aimed at kids.
I’m not advocating for skipping movies at the theater, which would render my endeavor rather moot, or with letting your television act as a 24/7 babysitter. What I am saying is that you should spend quality time with your kids, while acknowledging there will be times you need a break from them and a grandparent isn’t around.
Bonus features are quite good, and get better the higher up the price scale you go. The DVD edition includes two short films and accompanying making-of featurette; four deleted scenes; character “pods” highlighting each of the critters; a making-of documentary short; a puppy training school trip with Kevin Hart; tutorials on drawing and making a flip book; and a pets-themed “Yule Log” for the holidays.
Upgrade to the 4K/Blu-ray version and you add “The Further Adventures of Captain Snowball,” a motion comic highlighting the further adventures of the ersatz hero. Digital access-only content amounts to four more documentary shorts.
"The Secret Life of Pets 2" is not made for me, or thee -- unless one of us is under the age of 10. In which case, I'll endeavor to keep the cursing in this review to a bare minimum.
Like the original film from three years ago, "Pets" is specifically and intentionally made for little kids to enjoy, and for parents to endure. During the screening whenever I started sighing or feeling my thoughts start to wander, I just looked over at my two boys, smiling and laughing their heads off.
Eighty-six minutes of intensely cute and predictable storytelling is not too much to endure for your children.
If anything, I like the sequel a little more than the first one. It splits up the action into three separate storylines, so just when one is getting a little tiresome it switches things up.
The main role of Max, voiced by Louis C.K., is taken over by Patton Oswalt (for #MeToo reasons). He's an excitable Jack Russell Terrier who's resistant to change. Duke, the big shaggy doofus voiced by Eric Stonestreet whose introduction into Max's household formed the basis of the first film's story, gets relegated to the backburner here.
A few years have passed and their woman has married and produced a baby, Liam, to whom the dogs are very attached. When the New York City family goes off for a vacation in the country at an uncle's farm, it sets all sorts of activities in motion.
Gidget, the cultured Pomeranian (voice of Jenny Slate) who pines for Max, is put in charge of his favorite toy, Busy Bee, but quickly loses it into the intimidating lair of the old lady downstairs who has a literal regiment of scary cats. To infiltrate this den of hiss, Gidget must disguise herself as a feline and learn the ways of the cat from her too-cool neighbor, Chloe (Lake Bell).
Meanwhile, uppity rabbit Snowball (Kevin Hart), who's really committed to playing super-hero dress-up with his girl, goes on his own mission. Befriending a Shih Tzu named Daisy (Tiffany Haddish), they rescue an albino tiger from a nasty circus owner (Nick Kroll). Then, of course, they've got to find somewhere to stash it.
Out on the farm, Duke and Max are impressed with the farm dog, Rooster, voiced with delicious gruffness by Harrison Ford. He's everything they are not: self-reliant, authoritative and master of other critters.
Rather than a typical movie dynamic, where Rooster resents the urban invaders and then gradually warms up to them, the country dog is more or less benevolent from the start. He's clearly annoyed by their lack of skill in essential dogginess, like herding sheep and howling at the moon. But Rooster sees Max not as a city slicker to be dismissed so much as a youngster in need of tutoring.
It's about as close to a blue state/red state bonding as we're apt to see in the movies these days.
Director Chris Renaud and Brian Lynch continue to ride their "Minions" formula: slapstick mixed with fart jokes and doe eyes. It's unsophisticated filmmaking for a kiddie audience, nothing more and nothing less.
You can bemoan that this type of movie exists, or pony up to the ticket booth and make your young'uns happy.
Colorful, boingy, copious critters, a robust emphasis on gastrointestinal humor -- if that’s not the perfect recipe for a little kids’ movie, then I don’t know what is.
Note I said “little kids’ movie,” not “family film,” because while “The Secret Life of Pets” is a strong entry in the former, it is not much in the way of the latter. What it mostly is is a sorta-sequel to “Minions,” made by the same people, with cartoony dogs and cats (a few birds and reptiles, too) swapped out for the lil’ yellow dudes.
Well, except these guys are understandable. It’s a “Toy Story” -ish conceit, about the adventures our pets go on when we’re not around. To humans their speech just sounds like barks and yelps and what have you, but they can all understand each other -- no inter-species language barrier here.
The story focuses on two dogs, Max and Duke, voiced by Louis C.K. and Eric Stonestreet. Max is a fun-loving little dude who has a cozy life in New York City with his owner, Katie (Ellie Kemper). But then one day she brings home Duke, an enormous brown ball of fluff from the shelter, and all bets are off as they vie for title of apartment alpha dog.
Through a whole lot of implausible contretemps, they’re lost in the city trying to find their way home. Meanwhile they are pursued by two groups. The first is a rescue mission led by Gidget (the adorably squeaky Jenny Slate), the white Pomeranian from across the way who secretly adores Max.
She throws together a ragtag group that includes Max’s other dog friends, a fat and lazy cat (Lake Bell), a parakeet, guinea pig and even a hawk (Albert Brooks), who tamps down his predatory instinct to help creatures he would usually snack on.
And that’s actually the normal team. The other, more antagonistic one is the Flushed Pets, a gang of discarded creatures who’ve sworn revenge on the human world that shunned them. They have a tattooed pig, a hairless and holey cat (Steve Coogan), several alligators, assorted lizards and fish and a large one-fanged viper. Their leader is Snowball (Kevin Hart), an excitable former magician’s rabbit with the heart of William Wallace and the combat skills of… a poofy little hare.
“Liberation forever, domestication never!” is his clarion call.
Director Chris Renaud, co-director Yarrow Cheney and screenwriters Ken Daurio, Brian Lynch and Cinco Paul pitch the material straight at the 3- to 8-year-old audience. For instance, there’s a dog party where they walk in a circle sniffing each other’s butts while exchanging pleasantries. (“Enchanté!”) A high point is a sequence where the dogs break into a sausage factory and gorge themselves, leading to pork-induced hallucinations and a musical number.
“The Secret Life of Dogs” is well-made, unambitious entertainment. It’s the sort of thing you appreciate being able to let your kids enjoy, while at the same time wishing it were permissible to go off and do something else.
(Drop-off theaters with supervised double-features of this and “The Angry Birds Movie”? Now that’s an upcharge parents would happily shell out for ahead of 3-D.)
A rather clumsy but also rather effective thriller, "No Escape" is a dark night's ride through a landscape of xenophobia and primal instincts. It's the sort of movie that accomplishes its mission but makes you feel a little slimy after watching it.
It's about an American family who land in some unnamed Southeast Asian country to start a new life with dad working for a benevolent U.S. company building a plant to provide drinking water for the spectacularly ungrateful natives, who launch a coup almost the minute they get to their hotel and start hunting foreigners for summary execution.
There's more to it, of course. Director John Erick Dowdle ("Quarantine"), who co-write the script with brother Drew, throws in suggestions that the Western spooks and suits have been here for some time, ripening up the ground for economic enslavement. Hey, somebody says, maybe all those leering marauders shooting American tourists in the back of the head are just freedom fighters standing up for their own children!
I'm guessing this is supposed to make us feel better about cheering when the yanks smash in the face of some anonymous bandana-wearing thug. Today's globally-themed disposable entertainment comes conveniently embedded with its own white guilt.
Owen Wilson and Lake Bell play the parents, and they're the best things about the movie. They're likeable and emotionally identifiable figures, and both have faces that are fascinating to watch in the way their beauty seems to transgress every supposed rule of how attractive people are supposed to look. I'm guessing a bunch of people told them they were ugly as teenagers, and look at 'em now.
Like Gerard Depardieu's, Wilson's nose boasts more interesting topography than most mountain ranges, with clefts, ravines and humpback rises. Thank God the plastic surgeons never got ahold of him.
Sterling Jerins and Claire Geare play the daughters, and they're good eggs, adorable when needed and whiny just when the story needs them to make noise when the bad guys are trolling nearby. Pierce Brosnan plays a scarred, debauched Irishman who offers a little help at the airport, and then a little more down the line. These days when Brosnan turns up in a movie, we just assume he's got a Walther PPK or a wristwatch laser stashed somewhere.
The bulk of the movie is essentially just one big long chase, as mom and dad try to get the kids to safety while avoiding the roving, random bands of bad guys. They end up making for the border with Vietnam to seek asylum ... Vietnam! You can practically feel the filmmakers poking us with the irony stick.
Look, I understand the rules better than most about how movies manipulate us, and the ways we are driven to root for the protagonists by having the villains do nasty things to them. But I'm uncomfortable with the way this picture uses Asian heavies as faceless boogums barely indistinguishable from each other.
The Americans wander around, stupidly trying to speak English to everybody, while the natives chatter away like inscrutable monkeys. Since the movie never even bothers to give the country a made-up name or language, they're literally generic hostile "foreigners."
(It was shot in Thailand, for what that's worth.)
The Americans are the naive innocents, of course, caught up in some overseas intrigue that interests them only so much as it threatens them. You get the sense that the dad's first call after the tragedy will be not to relatives to assure their safety but to his company to see if his relocation bonus check will still clear.
"No Escape" is visceral, nail-biting and sure to entertain. Your instructions are to shriek at the scary Orientals, and try not to think too much about it afterward.
