Review: Highly entertaining sequel brings back what we love about these characters, while adding some good laughs and charm along the way.
Like the first film, what makes this movie so appealing is the characters. These characters go beyond the simple dog and cat stereotypes you see in similar movies. It is true that dog and cat stereotypes are often used for humor, but the characters' personalities are never reduced to this. They have much more to endear us with making them feel real and believable. Max takes on personality traits of not only a very nervous dog, but also of an overprotective parent and a jealous child. Gidget may be over eager and jump to conclusions about everything, but she is also pretty smart when she needs to be. Chole may conform to many cat stereotypes but she can also be a caring and loyal friend. Also helping make these characters feel real is the great voice acting and animation. Every voice artist is perfectly cast and the animation is pure character animation executed fantastically. Truth be told this is not true for every character. Mel is still a rather bland and unfunny stereotype and the villain is kind of boring. However these are not our main characters so it ends up being not a big deal.
This movie realizes something that many mainstream movies don't. This movie knows when your characters are likable than your story doesn't need to be anything big. There doesn't need to be huge steaks that put the world or a city in danger. A story can involve just our main characters and what they need to overcome. There is an action scene near the end, but it is a rather small scale one and is often played more for humor and character moments than real suspense. This movie having a small scale story works perfectly as it allows us to spend time with these characters and enjoy their company.
The humor of this film is one place that improves on the first film. There are quite a few real laugh out loud moments to be found here. However even the jokes that aren't laugh out loud funny are never really bad. The worst jokes are still at least somewhat amusing (with the exception of a rather embarrassing mid-credits scene, but that doesn't really count). With this in mind I had a smile on my face for the majority of the film.
For a fun time at the movies, this is an excellent choice.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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