Bad Dog: THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS

The animators at Illumination Entertainment have taken a break from their anarchic Minions to show us The Secret Life of Pets. It’s a far more conventional and predictable kids’ movie, operating from the shameless question, “What if Toy Story, but with pets?” It wouldn’t surprise me if writers Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio, and Brian Lynch had a plaque over their desks saying, “What would Pixar do?” Their movie is about an overconfident little guy who feels threatened when his owner brings home a new buddy. Feelings of jealousy lead him to try to get rid of this intruder and return to being the leading recipient of his owner’s affections. Unfortunately, his attempts to do so leave him lost far from home, with only his new nemesis for company. A group of pals left behind try to figure out how to save these two, while a group of misfits the mismatched pair encounter on their journey home start out menacing before revealing themselves as cuddly help. Along the way there’s a dollop of sentimental backstory and by the end there’s a big scrambling chase after a truck. Sounds familiar?

There was barely a moment of this movie where I wasn’t reminded of Toy Story, except for the climax, which has a little more in common with the end of Finding Dory. Chalk that up to bad timing more than copying, I suppose. The problem with playing the Pixar formula – especially when the originators themselves are reaching the limits of its potential – is that Illumination is no Pixar. They’re trying to be something they aren’t. They have nothing of their inspiration’s deep thought-through approach to imagined worlds and none of the cleverness of premise. Pets is a pretty easy and lazy display of the simplest possible imagination. There’s a secret society of pets under their owner’s noses, a reasonable enough picture-book assumption. What does that entail? Well, in this New York City apartment building it means the animals roam the halls and end up partying and hanging out together all day before the people return at night. They play it safe, content with their lot in life. There’s no great community built up, just a bunch of animals sitting around.

The lead dog is Max (Louis C.K.). He’s jealous of a big new dog (Eric Stonestreet) his owner (Ellie Kemper) brings home. Their neighbors include a fluffy white dog (Jenny Slate), a surly cat (Lake Bell), two more dogs (Hannibal Buress and Bobby Moynihan), and a falcon (Albert Brooks). I’d tell you more about who these characters are, but they’re not much. Relying entirely on what little personality the famous voices can filter through, they’re bouncy bright cartoony critters with little in the way of interior lives and only the simplest one-note motivations. It’d be fine if there weren’t so little else to pay attention to. The movie’s best creation is a sewer gang of discarded animals who call themselves The Flushed Pets and plot to hurt humans. A rough bunny voiced by Kevin Hart leads them. Unfortunately the rigidly deterministic message of the movie softens them – after a lengthy bus crash sequence in which surely several people die – saying all counterculture revolutionaries secretly want to learn their proper place in the world and be happy with that. It’s nothing if not a settling-for-the-status-quo downer.

At least co-directors Chris Renaud and Yarrow Cheney keep the look colorful and cuddly, and the voice work does sell a funny line here and there. It’s best in an early sequence setting up the daily routine of pets. This gives the chance for animators to get funny gags out of their characters identifiable animals behaviors next to anthropomorphized emotions. Max whines about his owner leaving only to snap into a tail-wagging leap when he hears the click of a door. That’s nice. Later, though, the movie grinds through predictable paces, scurrying here and there, engaging in predictable pratfalls, cartoon violence and vertigo, and growing thinner all the while. It’s best when unexpected, like a hallucinogenic hunger dream in which hot dogs sing “We Go Together.” Moments like that are rare. It feels mechanical and routine. Ho-hum, just another technically competent computer animated comedy with celebrity voices on an adventure learning to appreciate what they have and whatnot. It’s programmed to hit the right beats, but not for intelligence or heart. At least it’s watchable and not downright hateful like The Angry Birds Movie. It’s just mindless. Why have such low expectations for what’s going in kid’s minds?

Take it On the Run: IDENTITY THIEF

Melissa McCarthy is a talented performer, a funny, versatile woman who brings a full commitment to each and every part she plays. She deserves every bit of success that her breakout Oscar-nominated role in Bridesmaids is bringing her, but hopefully that success includes better roles than the one she has in Identity Thief. She co-stars in the title role as a woman who hijacks identities, wrings out all their financial potential, and then leaves her unknown-to-her victims to sort out the mess that’s left of their livelihoods. The movie wants to get big laughs out of her repulsive antagonistic sociopathic behaviors and then draw the audience in with sympathy for her simply through affection for the actress underneath. It’s not only a step too far for the film’s emotional journey, but it’s unfair to the character and the audience as well.

It’s a movie held together by one of those only-in-the-movies plots that exists only as an excuse to force two actors through an episodic series of run-ins with eccentric caricatures. Jason Bateman finds that his credit cards are maxed out, his credit rating just hit rock bottom, and he’s wanted for assault in Florida. As he’s in Colorado and definitely not the woman in the mug shot on file, he’s let go. The police tell him that unless the criminal who stole his identity showed up in their office, it could take a year or more to get his finances back in order. This is unacceptable to him, what with the pending promotion and a pregnant wife, so he heads off to find the thief and trick her into going back to Denver with him and confessing. It’s the kind of premise that invites far more questions than the script has any interest in answering.

Now, why his credit card company didn’t immediately flag the Florida charges as potentially fraudulent, I’m not sure. Why, as a reasonably intelligent character who works in finance, would we see him in the first scene giving his social security number over the phone to a person who called him claiming to be from a fraud detection agency? Who knows? It all exists simply to get the plot rolling, which in turn only exists to keep itself rolling. It falls apart not only if you think about it, but also even if you don’t. No matter. Bateman’s a fine straight man, especially when he gets the chance to show that deep down he’s just as crazy as all the other characters. He’s just better at hiding it. (See: Arrested Development. No seriously. See it if you haven’t. It’s great.) Here he doesn’t get that chance as he’s understandably upset that he ends up driving cross country with McCarthy as she’s chased by a bounty hunter (Robert Patrick) and a couple of gun-toting underlings (Genesis Rodriguez and T.I.) answering to a tough-as-nails drug dealer (Jonathan Banks, drifting off of his Breaking Bad menace).

The slack one-thing-after-another plot is filled with thoroughly unfunny car crashes and shootouts interspersed between cameos (Jon Favreau, John Cho, Eric Stonestreet, etc.) and long sequences of forced bonding between the charming-despite-the-writing leads. Director Seth Gordon, whose debut film The King of Kong has earned him perhaps too much good will from me, and whose tepidly dark comedy Horrible Bosses seems much better by comparison to Identity Thief, just can’t make this movie work. Craig Mazin’s screenplay is built around the kind of deeply psychologically damaged character that’s difficult to laugh at and hard to see a way to laugh with. By the end, it just gets sad. Of course, by then the filmmakers have expected us to be liking the thief for no other reason than because she’s pathetic, has a sad backstory, and because McCarthy’s so likable. It’s an emotional turn on which the entirety of the climax hinges and it just doesn’t work. Bateman tries his hardest to sell it, and it’s never going to be easy to dismiss the formidable McCarthy, but the material is just not there. It’s a lazy farce that could’ve used some tightening up, but even then would still be built on the unsteady foundation of miscalculated characterizations that fine actors could hardly save. As it is, they’re good enough to get close, but that’s not quite close enough.

Bad Movie: BAD TEACHER

Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is mean, deceitful, and superficial. She enters each and every social situation with only one goal: getting out with whatever will benefit her the most. She’s also a middle-school teacher, the kind that sleeps behind the desk and shows movies everyday. She is the eponymous Bad Teacher. When she’s not skating by, doing the bare minimum required, she’s romantically pursuing the hot substitute with a rich family (Justin Timberlake) while being pursued by the sweet, kind of dumpy gum teacher (Jason Segel).

This sounds like a high-quality setup for a comedy, especially with this usually charming cast, but it’s just not funny. In Elizabeth Halsey, Cameron Diaz, who can be a great comedienne, gets a part that is certainly a more inherently interesting character than she usually gets to sink her teeth into. The problem is the central miscalculation that we'll care about this character just because she's unrepentantly bad, dressing provocatively, swearing, drinking, doing drugs, behaving recklessly. I don't care that she misbehaves because she goes about it for entirely unremarkable reasons.

First, she wants to get a breast augmentation and decides to save up for it, embezzling and lying her way into more cash. Then, she decides to go after the rich sub. Then, she hears about a bonus for the teacher with the class with the highest test scores, so she wants to become a great teacher long enough to get the cash prize. With all these competing selfish motivations laid out in a flat, unremarkable way it’s hard to get a hold of any one tangible reason to care.

The plot's just a shambles that can't be saved by the actors who are given thin unconvincing characters to play. Supporting characters appear and disappear with oddly inconsequential wispiness despite funny work being done by Phillis Smith, Lucy Punch, John Michael Higgins, Thomas Lennon, and Eric Stonestreet. They drop in and out of the plot with alarming unpredictability. Where do they go when they aren’t showing up to do their required bits? There’s no sense that any of these characters have lives that exist outside the frame.

If the tone weren’t as messy as the plot, I’d be more inclined to cut it some slack. The screenplay by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, of The Office, is neither mean enough nor sweet enough. They want to have their bile and excuse it away too. This is a particularly strange flaw since director Jake Kasdan usually gets the balance right, like in his underrated teen comedy Orange County, underseen showbiz satire The TV Set, or his biopic parody Walk Hard, which manages the difficult feat of mocking while still finding ways to be moving. Bad Teacher just doesn’t work, which is all the more disappointing since it seems to have all the raw materials of a movie that would actually be funny.