Synopsis:  A cute little dog named Max loves and lives for his owner.  He has a network of friends he hangs out with once their owners are gone that includes dogs, cats, birds, and a hamster.  Then – disaster.  She brings home a big dog that takes over his bed and his home.

Max is mad.  He wants to get rid of the dog.  And in the process they both end up lost in New York City and it’s up to their friends to find them and bring them home.

So basically – Toy Story with pets.  Super cute pets.  Max has a female dog in love with him that teams up with a falcon hawk.  Max and ‘dumb oaf’ have adventures, fall into a group of ‘flushed’ and abandoned animals who hate humanity and then run afowl of them, have a nitrate induced trip about singing hot dogs, learn to love each other and make it home in time for dinner.

The Good:  The animation is slick.  It’s made by the company that created the Minions and Despicable Me, so that’s expected.  The voices didn’t distract me with the ‘oh, it’s THAT celebrity’ like some animation does when they go for A-list actors instead of voice artists (even though the film was still mostly populated by actors).  The story was, for the most part, light fluff with a lot of silly laughs.  They also did a good job with characterizing some of the animals, showing a true love for pets.  You could tell who in the theater was a dog or cat owner by when they laughed.

The most laughs were probably garnered by the interactions with Snowball, a homicidal bunny voiced by Kevin Hart.  Snowball leads a group of abandoned pets that includes snakes and alligators and rats on top of cats and dogs and a pig that was used as a tattoo tester/canvas.  All of their actions are wonderfully over the top hilarious and borderline inappropriate to the point that I was chuckling, ‘oh, god,’ quite a bit throughout.

The Bad:  There is one 10-15 minute scene somewhere in the middle that feels tacked on an like the writer was told the film was to short and ‘create backstory for that other dog.’  It’s also a scene of forced pathos.  In it, our hero Max talks to other dog about going back to his home, one he apparently ran away from before getting caught by Animal Control.  We are shown flashbacks of him and his owner, an elderly black man.  The only non-white person I remember in the film.  They go to the house and there is now a cat there who tells our heroes that the old man died and someone else owns the house now.  Other dog gets mad at Max for forcing him to go and runs off, angry, while animal control is called.

It’s bad for a couple reason.  First off, it’s just badly written or placed and feels overly manipulative.  Secondly, this shows the only non-white person in the film AND HE DIES.  Even in a kids animated film the black guy can’t survive.

The Female:  This is about animals, yes.  Neutered animals (it’s mentioned).  Yet there is still the normal gender politics at play.  It would not pass the Bechdel test (two female characters, talking, and about something other than the man).  Here are the female players:

The owner:  She’s a woman who rescues dogs from the pound, or enough to start the story.

Gidget:  She’s a fluffy white powder puff of a pomeranian type dog and is in love with Max.  The joke is that he doesn’t really even notice her and she’s obsessed.  She’s the one who leaves the charge to rescue him.  It isn’t until she Karate chops her way to save them that he sees her as more than the fluffy white thing that always says hello to him.

Chloe: A mackerel/gray tabby cat that’s friends with Max when it suits her, but also knows how to rally the troops to help save him when it’s needed.

Annndddd, that’s it.  IMDB lists one other female named Maria but I don’t remember her.  The female voices get a chance to talk a bit, have their own jokes, but not a life outside of Max.

Overall:  This was fun.  It’s always sad when even in kids films the same racial and gender roles play out, especially one about animals where you have a chance to go elsewhere.  But I still laughed and if you want to not think, it’s not a bad way to go.

Synopsis:  In a fabulist tale of a movie, if you are single you are sent to a hotel by the woods where you have 45 days to meet someone before being turned into an animal of your choosing.  Your days can be extended for each ‘loner’ you bring in – people who live in the woods attempting to escape the choice of relationship or animal.  However, there are rules to being a loner as well – you can’t kiss or sleep with anyone or there are ‘repercussions.’

Rachel Weisz narrates the beginning where we follow David, a recent single man, who goes to the hotel with his dog, Bob, which we learn is his brother who didn’t make it.  When he checks in he is asked his orientation and told he can only choose Hetero or Homosexual, as Bisexual caused too many issues  From there he has one hand chained to his back so he can see how useful two are.  We are taken through the absurd view of being paired – how a lot of it is done on similar ‘defining features’ – such as a man who has a limp (caused when he went to visit his mother, who turned into a wolf after his father ran off, and other wolves at the zoo attacked him) whose wife also had a limp. Her passing is why he is currently there.

Afraid of becoming an animal that others eat, the man with a limp pretends to have a nosebleed to match with a woman who gets nosebleeds.  Meanwhile, David pretends to be a sociopath to match with a female sociopath.  After she does something too horrendous for him to pretend anymore, David runs off into the woods to become a loner and there he meets his ‘match’ – a woman nearsighted like him played by Rachel Weisz.  But it’s not allowed out there and they have to develop their attachment in secret, because there are bad things afoot if they’re found.

The Good:  The absurdist nature of this had the theater chuckling throughout.  For example, there is always an unexpected animal in the background in the scenes in the forest.  In one, we learn a woman is turned into a pony and then later see the pony nosing around the background.  At another there is a flamingo or a camel that walks through the scene.

The parts at the hotel in the beginning, while we are learning the rules of the world are also great.  There are ‘plays’ the single people have to go to where they learn the benefits of being a partner.  In one, a man is eating alone chokes and dies.  Then they show how having a partner would lead to them living as they simulate the Heimlich.    If partners are having problems ‘they are given children, as that seems to help.’

This world building continues in the woods where you learn about ‘red lips’- if you are caught kissing you have a razor drawn across your lips and throughout you see people with bandages over their lips.  The narrator says there is also ‘red genitals’ if you are caught doing something else.  Then we are told that you dance alone, so they only allow you to listen to electronica and there is a scene where people are just dancing to their own music.

The actors take to the roles well.  Part of the allure of the film is the flat affect which everyone has.  While there is the sociopathic woman who has no feeling, few others do either, just not as blatantly and it’s shown in all interactions and the acting.  This is not a world where love goes into matching, you just do it if you have a similar ‘defect’ from others and so you don’t become an animal.  Everything is regimented and dictated.  If you aren’t partnered the law will find you – as is shown in a scene in a mall where if you are alone and don’t have a certificate showing you are coupled you get hauled away.  At times you can almost see the glee with which the actors are playing everything so straight.  And great actors, too.  John C. Reilly and Rachel Weisz and Colin Farrell are the most prominent names.  There was also an always heart-wrenching character portrayed by Ashley Jensen – I fell in love with her in Extras and she doesn’t disappoint here.

The Bad:  The tone shift is incredibly prominent and you felt it in the theater.  The hotel part is absurdist fun as we are learning the rules – and then (BEWARE OF THIS!)

Bob the dog is kicked to death AND YOU SEE THE AFTERMATH.  Once we see the bloody dog in the bathroom not moving and the blood on the sink and the woman’s leg, yeah, it’s not fun anymore.  Then suddenly we’re out in the forest and you see more of this darkness overtly, instead of just the hints in the absurd.  There’s the red kiss but also the awful thing the leader of the loners does to Rachel Weisz’s character when she finds out she is planning to run away.  This is probably the biggest flaw, how it changes so drastically and is like two different films tacked together.

Also, it feels less like a film and more like a fabulist story put on the screen.  It’s narrated, it’s purposely flat in terms of action, and fits so nicely into the current literary movement of asian fabulism that Clarkesworld, and other magazines, is promoting.  I would have loved to read this as a story and almost feel like I did more than like it was something I saw in the theater.

In the vein of a literary magical realism story, the ending is a non-ending and there was a collective ‘What?’ when the credits began to roll followed by ‘shit’ by more than one person in the audience.  It’s okay to end films and stories, people.  Give us satisfaction.  Although, at the same time I understand that no one in that world was allowed satisfaction and that was part of the themes.  There was the running joke of women getting guys erect and then leaving them like that, with masturbation outlawed.

The Female:  Here’s where it gets tricky.  While the hotel says both homo and heterosexuality is allowed we only see hetero.  And David is the main character, so it’s most about him.  There are other women, but by nature of the film’s set-up they are there to partner up with a man, except for the female leader of the loners in the woods.  There is one scene where two best friends sort of talk to one another, when one is reading a letter about how much she’ll miss her friend (who is to become a horse, having not met anyone). But I don’t really remember them much talking even in that scene.  The maid and the loner leader talk a bit, and not about men, and there are other conversations.

Now, the Bechdel test says that two women must talk and not about men, even if it’s a sentence.  If we go by that, then it passes.  Some add that the women must also have a name- if we go by that, it fails.  David and his dogbrother Bob have names.  The friends they meet that are male have names (Jon, the man who limps) but no woman is given a name in this film.   Is this because they are only there to partner with the men, who are the focal point, and thus just another thing do be acquired so should have no name?  Could be.  The loner leader definitely has agency in the film, even if she ends up in a grave at the end at the hands of David.  As does the maid, and the female friend who becomes a horse (because she had fabulous hair).

This is ultimately David’s tale in the world he’s stuck in, but there are more female characters than many films nowadays and even if not the focal point, they speak.

Overall – it’s a film that is being discussed for a reason.  There are good things in here and it does read like a story on screen, as in, it feels more ‘writerly’ than cinematic.  Plus, there are some laughs to be had and things to discuss afterward.