The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)

The Secret Life of Pets 2 arrives as the second installment in a franchise that has already proven it can move units, and it conducts itself with the mechanical efficiency of a well-maintained amusement park ride. The voice cast is a broad and capable ensemble, with Tiffany Haddish and Hannibal Buress joining the returning players and Harrison Ford lending gravitas to a Welsh sheepdog. That diversity reads as ordinary animation casting practice, not a statement, and nothing in the film pauses to remark on it. This is the correct approach, and also the honest one.

The plot splits into three strands, as sequels of this size tend to do. Gidget, the Pomeranian, undertakes a solo infiltration of a cat-infested apartment and is proclaimed queen of the felines. Daisy, a Shih Tzu, drives the rescue of a captive white tiger. These are sturdy adventure beats, conventional and well timed, and they grant the female characters agency without arguing a thesis about it. The villain, a circus ringmaster named Sergei, mistreats his animals, which gestures faintly at the ethics of commercial entertainment. The film never follows that thread into an economic argument, and it shows no interest in doing so. Max's anxieties form the emotional spine, and the film treats them as fears to be managed through gruff mentorship, not as a condition to be celebrated.

The film does offer a soft message for parents about letting go, delivered with enough slapstick that no viewer under ten will notice it. It is gentle, it is brief, and it does not lecture. A sequel exists here because the first one made money, and the result is competent, agreeable, and thin. We have seen this film many times before, in many costumes. It remains easy to sit through, and it remains easy to forget.