'The Secret Life of Pets' took the world by storm with it's incredibly crafted teaser trailer about what your pets do while we're away from home. Once that trailer dropped this film skyrocketed towards the top of the must see list of 2016. To my surprise...this film is really mediocre for about 75% of it's run-time. The first act of the film is really fun and the best part of the film but it's everything we've seen heavily promoted. We see the poodle rocking out, we see one dog flirting with another, we see Duke and Max have a squabble in the apartment. It's really fun stuff but other than that the film gets boring really fast. Once Duke and Max begin their adventure the film takes a nose dive and plummets straight towards the Earth at a rapid pace. The film also is like a poorly pieced together copy of Toy Story. Max is Katie's number one dog just like Woody is Andy's number one toy. Once Duke enters the picture Max gets jealous of Duke, just like Woody gets jealous of Buzz. Once the story gets set into motion it's all about Max and Duke finding their way back home, just like Woody and Buzz try and find their way back home. I'm pretty upset about this because this film had the potential to be one of the year's best films. It had a unique concept at first but then it becomes a generic, one-note, boring film up until the final 5-10 minutes. All of the characters are forgettable. All of the events the film have are beyond the realm of logic and the film itself already feels forgettable. The voice cast is almost as bad. Louis C.K. is a wonderful comedian but his voice work here brings nothing to the film. Danna Carvey is quite good but I hadn't even recognized it was him until I saw the credits. The film itself just feels so uninspired and lazy. On a brighter note the animation is actually quite appealing. Illumination's animation hasn't always been my favorite but it's certainly serviceable. Like I said earlier this film's first act and final 5-10 minutes are truly amazing and if they weren't that amazing this film would be towards the very bottom of my ranking for all the animated films I've seen. I just wish they had stuck with this unique concept for the entire film, I can't stress enough how well this film starts and finishes. The film also manages to get some good laughs out of it's audience with subtle animal jokes. There's a guinea pig gag that runs throughout the film and it's amazing. There's lots of amazing dog, cat, bird, eagle, pig jokes as well and I laughed a few times but they were short lived. These are about the only positives the film had to offer for me, this film could have been terrible but it's just mediocre. I can't recommend this film to anyone really and I definitely think you should wait to see it or wait to take your kids because it isn't worth the price of admission. Practically forgettable, lazy, and generic the secret is out and it isn't good. 'The Secret Life of Pets' gets a 5/10