Like the “Despicable Me” movies, which put Illumination
on the map (and spawned those furshlugginer Minions), “The
Secret Life of Pets” is adequate animated entertainment, amusing
while it lasts but not especially memorable except as a catalog of
compromises and missed opportunities. Among those are the New
York setting, a potential wonderland of glamour, filth and
imagination that is rendered as blandly as if the movie had been
shot on a back-lot set.