Danger Close: The Battle Of Long Tan

(MA15+) ★★★

Director: Kriv Stenders.

Cast: Travis Fimmel, Daniel Webber, Luke Bracey, Richard Roxburgh, Nicholas Hamilton, Matt Doran, Stephen Peacocke, Myles Pollard, Uli Latukefu, Anthony Hayes, Sam Parsonson.

"No, I said half Hawaiian, half Mexican, with extra cheese."

"War? Huh! Good lord! What is it good for?" asked The Temptations (and Edwin Starr and Bruce Springsteen and Frankie Goes To Hollywood).

The answer to this question is "movies". Or, more particularly in this case, "Aussie movies".

We Aussies do love churning out war films, almost as much as we love commemorating Anzac Day. In the past decade alone we've seen Beneath Hill 60, The Railway Man, The Water Diviner and Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge (and you could probably include Tomorrow When The War Began in that lot if you wanted).

The latest addition to the list is the awkwardly titled Danger Close: The Battle Of Long Tan, which tries (and succeeds) at putting you in the midst of that fateful day in 1966.

For those who slept through history class (or didn't get taught about it), the Battle Of Long Tan is one of Australia's best "against great odds" war stories - 100 Aussies and some long range Howitzers versus an estimated North Vietnamese/Viet Cong force of about 2000 troops in a South Vietnamese rubber plantation.

Stenders' film puts you among the soldiers in visceral and well filmed fashion. It looks stunning and when shit gets real early on, it's heart-pounding stuff. There is also an admirable level of authenticity to proceedings. The battle seems to play out in real time, and the lingo, uniforms and behaviours make it feel like the real deal.

The downside of this is that the film becomes a near-endless barrage of shoot-outs that unfortunately begin to look and feel exactly the same. The shots become identical from one mini-battle to the next - count how many times you see a slo-mo of a faceless North Vietnamese soldier blown into the air by a Howitzer blast.

This action focus is at the expense of character. We get to meet five of the soldiers, led by Fimmel's Harry Smith, very briefly in the opening, but after that you're left to guess out who is who, with no names or character arcs for context. It makes it hard to feel for those that don't make it, which sucks a lot of the emotional punch out of the film.

Having said that, the performances are pretty solid all round. Fimmel is given the most to do and is a nice mix of suitably damaged, overly gung-ho, and quietly human in the face of great adversity. The rest of the nameless grunts are left to be scared/brave/determined/exhausted and do a good job of it, with Bracey standing out. Roxburgh, as the hissable "villain" Brigadier Jackson, is the only one outside of Fimmel given a lot of dramatic work to do.

There is some pretty impressive stuntwork, the cinematography from Ben Nott is superb, and the production design is good. One strange thing that bears mentioning is how bad the monsoon in the film looks - it's painfully obvious that it wasn't really raining, and that a too-small number of overhead sprinklers and minimal CGI were used to ill effect.

Stenders has put together a well shot and engaging re-enactment of the Battle of Long Tan, which strives for authenticity and should at least be praised for its efforts in achieving this and honouring the fallen. As a film though, it falls short in many areas, becoming a repetitive, emotionless and vaguely propagandist endeavour due to there being no context around the battle or the brave men who sadly gave their lives.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: Quentin Tarantino.

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Emile Hirsch, Margaret Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Austin Butler, Mike Moh, Al Pacino.

"I loved you in Johnny Suede."

Welcome to Tarantino's weirdest film yet. It's easily his most mystifying work since Pulp Fiction, his least accessible piece to date, and the most self-indulgent movie of his career (which is saying something for Tarantino).

Admittedly, upon leaving the cinema it felt like QT had missed his mark - that it was a bloated, plotless mess, more caught up in reproducing a lost era of cinema than telling a ripping yarn. But the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced his aim is true.

It's long, yes - too long - but it's surprising, hilarious, and unlike anything else in his catalogue. Yet it's also definitely, distinctively, decidedly Tarantino. It will leave a lot of people cold, but that has always been Tarantino's thing - his idiosyncrasies have never been to all tastes, but here he really serves up something that many will find unpalatable, while others will savour for days.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is QT's ode to the final days of Hollywood's golden age; an era that he posits ended when a bunch of Charles Manson's minions committed the so-called Tate Murders in August 1969.

As the film counts down to that bloody full stop, we meet actor Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and his stuntman/buddy Cliff Booth (Pitt). Rick's star is fading, making him a perennial guest star on TV shows while he hopes and waits for a career revival. Meanwhile Cliff fills his days doing odd jobs for Rick and driving around Los Angeles. It's during one of these drives that he meets Pussycat (Qualley), who is a member of the "Manson Family".

And living next door to Rick is Sharon Tate (Robbie) - a fun-loving actress whose star is rising.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is Tarantino's homage to the twilight of Tinsel Town's halcyon days, and he mirrors this decline in Rick Dalton's career. The role is a gift for DiCaprio, who gets to give some truly cheesy performances, as well as have an on-set meltdown, in between delivering some quite powerful and masterful moments.

DiCaprio gets Pitt to bounce off, and they make for a great pairing that keeps the film moving when it doesn't feel like anything is actually happening. While Rick is a bundle of flaws, fears and inadequacies, his ol' buddy Cliff is always there to reassure him. Cliff's own dark past is teased and tantalised, partly as a way to build the character, but its frustrating. Subject matter aside, Pitt makes Cliff a great mix of gumshoe and goon - an affable and easygoing stuntman from an era of L.A. that's about to wink out of existence, and he doesn't seem to mind.

Robbie's Tate is frustratingly underwritten, but in the context of the wider film, it works. She is the bubbly, oblivious flower child enjoying the best that Hollywood has to offer in this era.

The character focus makes the film feel plotless and meandering. It's first act is painfully slow, while the middle segments which follow Sharon, Rick and Cliff individually are long but more interesting. Then the finale hits and all bets are off. Surprises abound, gears are shifted, and you won't know what hit you. It's impossible to talk about it thoroughly and how much it all means without spoilers, but this isn't that kind of review. All that can be said is that Tarantino's choices for the ending will have you thinking, speculating and wondering for days to come.

It's this last half hour that really changes everything. Prior to that, the film felt like some great performances played out in a well-captured era, with the production design, radio ads, costumes, and soundtrack all serving to evoke the movie's time capsule vibe. But it seemed like little more than that.

But there's an exhilarating and bizarre boldness to the ending that is not only oddly hilarious, but hugely entertaining, like a pay off for the previous slowness. It also fits together so many pieces of the puzzle, helping to fully realise the picture QT was trying to paint. Some sections still feel overpadded, and it could easily be half an hour shorter, even in light of his magnificent outro, but it makes the journey worthwhile.

Like many Tarantino films, this bears re-watching, study and analysis. It's hard to tell where this fits in his oeuvre, but it's a fascinatingly strange movie from an incomparable artist.

Palm Beach

(M) ★★½

Director: Rachel Ward.

Cast: Bryan Brown, Greta Scacchi, Sam Neill, Richard E Grant, Heather Mitchell, Jacqueline McKenzie, Claire van der Boom, Aaron Jeffery, Matilda Brown, Charlie Vickers, Frances Berry.

The latest Endless Summer movie was a real disappointment.

In a rare week when there is not one but two Aussie films getting a wide release in our cinemas (see also Danger Close: The Battle Of Long Tan), you could be forgiven for thinking there was some kind of local movie industry resurgence going on.

But Palm Beach is not the signal of a new wave - rather it's evidence of an industry stuck in the sand. The film fills a void for an oft-ignored demographic, and hopefully gets bums on seats, but it lacks the vitality, spark and originality to make it a runaway success or even highly recommendable. It is okay, but nothing more than that. It is pleasantly average, vaguely disappointing, and largely forgettable.

If nothing else, the top-shelf cast and the colourful characters they portray are welcome company as they reunite at the scenic Palm Beach. It's the birthday (60th? 70th?) of former band manager and T-shirt designer Frank (Bryan Brown), and flying in to join him and his wife (Scacchi) for a boozy long weekend are their kids (Matilda Brown and Vickers), ex-bandmates Billy (Grant) and Leo (Neill), along with their wives - actress Eva (Mitchell) and the fun-loving Bridget (McKenzie) - plus Holly (van der Boom), who is the daughter of the band's deceased lead singer, and her beau Doug (Jeffery).

Over the next few days, they will bicker and laugh, and dig up old memories and long-buried secrets as they re-evaluate what went wrong and right with their lives.

A better Aussie cast you'd be hard-pressed to find, and their chemistry helps give the film some necessary warmth, even in the face of a script that struggles to drum up any real emotion. In the "having a good time" scenes, you get the sense this was fun to make, and that the cast enjoyed themselves. That goodwill flows over into the film, and the older actors all acquit themselves well. It's only a woefully miscast Jeffery (he's 50, not a young lover) and an underwhelming van der Boom who let the side down. But they are the least of the film's problems.

Palm Beach lacks tension, which induces tedium. Several potentially large issues are dealt with either too quickly or not at all. One character uses the band's hit song for an ad without the knowledge of the other members, and the next day, all is forgiven, despite it being a huge deal the day before (and there is no discussion about royalties - is it just me or is that weird? On a sidenote, this is representative of the film's unrealistic portrayal of its old ex-musos - they never seem like former bandmates in their inter-relationships or the way they talk about the band's past, if at all). A character damages a neighbouring house, but this is ignored.

The script's biggest disservice is done to its female characters. Their arcs all revolve around their men or are non-existent. Faring worst is McKenzie's Bridget who gets no subplot at all. But worst of all is the fact a lot of their conversations are about their men, as if they have no lives of their own. The female characters don't feel as well fleshed out as the male ones, which is disappointing.

The slow-burn central mystery of the film is hackneyed and fails to spark anything, while the various in-and-out of love plots are tiring. All of these issues boil down to the lacklustre and unoriginal script. It's The Big Chill meets The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and that's not necessarily a recommendation.

(I thought I was clever coming up with that comparison, but it turns out Bryan Brown has been describing it thus in interviews. So if nothing else, I at least feel like I was right.)

It leaves Palm Beach lacking any distinguishing features beyond the cast. Ward's direction captures the setting well, and imbues shots with warmth, but the script (which she co-wrote) falls short. It needed more laughs, some sizzle in the dialogue, and some actual stakes. It doesn't help that the movie wanders from one mid-life crisis to the next, occasionally hitting a nice theme or seam of story, before meandering off to a montage of postcard-worthy scenery.

This blandness is also exemplified by the soundtrack. It's a mix of overplayed '60s and '70s rock, folk and soul songs that don't add to the film. Instead they unsubtly labour points, or feel like generic selections. Are these songs supposed to speak to the bygone halcyon days of these characters, because if so, the time span feels too wide? Why isn't the soundtrack buzzing with the "contemporaries" of the main characters' band, or a narrower selection from a particular era to invoke a welcome feeling of nostalgia?

This is a missed opportunity because the cast is largely fun to hang out with. But their high spirits and strong performances wear out in the face of tired tropes between the patchy entertainment.

Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw

(M) ★★★

Director: David Leitch.

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby, Eiza González, Eddie Marsan, Helen Mirren, Cliff Curtis, Ryan Reynolds, Rob Delaney, Kevin Hart.

The new series of The Block was going to be lit.

Read my review of Fast Five here.
Read my review of Fast & Furious 6 here.
Read my review of Furious 7 here.
Read my review of The Fate Of The Furious (F&F8) here.

Here's a fun experiment - find someone who's never seen a Fast & Furious film. Then make them sit down and watch the first movie in the series (The Fast & The Furious from all the way back in 2001). Then get them to watch Hobbs & Shaw.

And then see if they can explain what the hell happened in between, and how these two films can possibly inhabit the same cinematic universe.

This spin-off is the ninth film in the series (although the actual Fast & Furious 9 is due out next year) and it certainly captures the over-the-top insanity and complete disregard for physics that the F&F franchise has made its stock-in-trade. There are still fast cars, although they are less prominent in this sidequel - this is less about cars, and more about Brosnan-era Bond-type OTT mayhem. Except on steroids. And possibly meth.

There is no subtlety here - Hobbs & Shaw makes past F&F movies look positively restrained. Remember when a high speed chase through tunnels under the Mexican border (see F&F4) seemed ludicrous? Well, you ain't seen nothing yet.

The plot revolves around the unlikely pairing of Johnson's federal agent Hobbs (first seen in F&F5) and Statham's soldier-turned-mercenary Shaw (first seen in an F&F6 cameo). They team up to track a stolen programmable virus, which is in the hands of an MI6 agent (Kirby) who has seemingly gone rogue. Also on the trail is cybernetically enhanced baddie Brixton (Elba), who has his own designs on the technovirus.

The films in the F&F series have ranged from bad and dumb (2 Fast 2 Furious) to good and dumb (Fast Five and Furious 7), and this is somewhere in the middle. It's particularly idiotic, but there's enough fun to be had to make its gargantuan run time almost worthwhile.

First to the dumb stuff. The contrivances in the first act-and-a-half are a real stretch. To get Johnson and Statham's supposed sworn enemies to work together, but also to keep Kirby's MI6 agent on the run means no one's motives make any sense. And your suspension of disbelief has to be tuned pretty high to be on board from the start. As with previous instalments, the way anything works - physics, law enforcement, the media, airports - is disregarded and replaced with an in-film logic that is basically whatever the filmmakers want it to be.

But Hobbs & Shaw's biggest sin is its length. After reaching a place where the film should have ended, our lead trio (and the plot) keep on running. While this brings us to Samoa for a memorable climax and some sledgehammering of F&F's eternal maxim - family is the most important thing ever -  it stretches the film well past its end-by time.

But now the fun stuff, and top of that list is Idris Elba. Despite boasting paper-thin villains with dodgy plans for world domination, F&F has managed to get some good actors to go bad and have a blast in the process. Charlize Theron and Luke Evans, as well as Statham and Johnson, have proven enjoyable antagonists in the franchise, and you can add Elba to that roster. Again, his character has little depth and a ridiculous motive, but he's formidable and entertaining. And, if nothing else, it looks like Elba is having blast.

Ditto for Johnson and Statham. Even if their insults and banter occasionally sink, there is still a half-decent dynamic between them. Kirby is an underwritten third wheel, poorly served by the script, but the film is definitely stronger when the three of them are on screen together. It's also worth noting that Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Hart, despite seemingly dropping in to visit the set from different movies, give really good cameos.

There's a lot about this that is not worth caring about and it's too long by nearly half an hour. But it's still fun, it still has some good moments (particularly its somewhat redeeming Samoan showdown), and it's batshit insane. But you get the feeling that it knows it's batshit insane. And that kind of makes it all okay.

Wild Rose

(M) ★★★★

Director: Tom Harper.

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Julie Walters, Sophie Okonedo, Jamie Sives, James Harkness, Daisy Littlefeld, Adam Mitchell.

"Jerry was a race car driver, he drove so goddamn fast..."

If you haven't heard of Jessie Buckley yet, you will soon. She's been making her name on the stage and in TV mini series such as Chernobyl, Taboo, and War & Peace, but Wild Rose is the kind of star-making turn that will, well, make her a star.

Her range, both vocally and dramatically, helps make this kitchen sink drama really sing. The story is not without its wobbly notes, but this is largely an energetic and well delivered look at how hard it can be to balance parental responsibilities with your passions.

Buckley stars as Glaswegian mother-of-two Rose-Lynn Harlan. Fresh out of jail after 12 months, she is trying to reconnect with her kids (Littlefield and Mitchell) while re-igniting her dream of being a country singer on the big stages of Nashville, Tennessee. Rose-Lynn finds a job and an enthusiastic supporter through Susannah (Okonedo), but battles with her own mother (Walters), who has looked after the kids for the past year and wants Rose-Lynn to get her life back on track.

Even if you're not a country music fan, you'll find yourself getting goosebumps when Buckley's voice soars. The musical sequences are mostly excellent, particularly her imagining a backing band while she performs a vacuum cleaner serenade, and a belter of a finale, courtesy of a song co-written by Caitlyn Smith, Kate York and actress Mary Steenburgen.

(Strange but true sidenote: Steenburgen wasn't musical until 2007 when she woke from general anaesthetic after a minor operation to find non-stop music playing in her head. “I couldn’t turn it off,” she said, so she began taking music lessons. Soon after, she had written a pile of songs and signed a record deal, despite having never had any musical inclinations for the 54 years of her life prior to the operation.)

Outside of the music, Buckley handles the dramatic and comedic extremes of her role beautifully. Rose-Lynn is a frustratingly impulsive character, and Buckley lets the love her/hate her aspects shine equally from the get-go. She brings this well written character to life with charm and swagger. A lot of credit for this also has to go screenwriter Nicole Taylor, and director Harper. While the story feels a little trite in places, it's predominantly realistic and well structured, keeping its emotions see-sawing.

The film is also buoyed by the ever-excellent Walters, who is fantastic as the put-upon grandmother desperate for her daughter to be a good mum, even at the expense of everything else. Her arc is a little compact and convenient, but the mother-daughter dynamic really helps drive the film. It's one of the interesting elements beneath the rough-and-tumble surface, along with the way Wild Rose examines how parenting, sacrifices, and goals intertwine, get tangled, and rarely become the beautiful bow you hope they will be.

As much as this is Buckley's film, it's on the back of a solid supporting cast, and nicely written screenplay, and some decent direction. Still, it's the Wild Rose herself that you'll really remember long after the last country song has finished over the credits.

The Lion King (2019)

(PG)  ★★★

Director: Jon Favreau.

Cast: (voices of) Donald Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner, Alfre Woodard, John Oliver, John Kani, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, James Earl Jones, JD McCrary, Shahadi Wright Joseph.

Which animal is going to eat the other? The answer might surprise you. 

It's either incredibly daring or bafflingly stupid to remake a perfect film - after all, there's no improving on perfection. Obviously.

Sometimes a remake can take a great film's central concept into a different direction, but usually it's best to leave things be. Unless you're incredibly daring. Or bafflingly stupid.

It's always seemed to me to be a smarter idea to re-do bad films. Bad films brim with unrealised potential, and failings that could use correcting. Not so for classic movies. Filmmakers taking on the classics have a slimmer margin for success. That's not to say it can't be done (it can), but its dangerous territory for any director.

Yet in recent times, Disney has largely found success in covering its own greatest hits, particularly with Cinderella and The Jungle Book. The notes and melodies are largely the same, but the shiny new production and orchestrations added new tones. If nothing else, these do-overs have modernised the stories, oiling up some of the creaking joints that have come with age, and enhancing elements that may have been underdone in the past.

But there are no such creaks in 1994's The Lion King. It remains a masterpiece of emotion, character, music, structure and pacing. Which means all director Favreau (fresh from reworking The Jungle Book) can do in the 2019 version of The Lion King is re-tell the same story in the same way, just with stunningly photo-realistic CG.

And the new take does look remarkable. It's nature doco worthy - you half-expect David Attenborough to start narrating. But basically this is the same emperor, just with some very, very fancy new clothes.

In case you missed the plot in the past 25 years, Simba the lion (voiced by McCrary as a cub, Glover when he's older) just can't wait to be king, but the machinations of his evil uncle Scar (Ejiofor) force Simba into exile, allowing Scar to usurp the throne. And along the way, we laugh, we learn, and we discover that hakuna matata means "no worries".

If there's one major takeaway from the new version of The Lion King, it's how right Disney got things the first time.

And that's not to say the 2019 take gets it wrong, but rather that everything about this remake that works does so because it worked back in 1994. That original script by Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts and Linda Woolverton spun its archetypal characters and story inspirations (from Hamlet to, allegedly, Kimba The White Lion) into storytelling perfection. It resulted in the peak of the Disney Renaissance, and not only one of the finest classically animated movies of all time, but one of the greatest movies of all time.

But unlike the other recent CG-heavy remakes of Disney classics, there is little to update here. Aladdin, Cinderella and Beauty & The Beast enjoyed welcome tweaks that modernised their viewpoints and broadened key characters. The Jungle Book (also directed by Favreau) had its weaknesses strengthened and teased out new and exciting story elements from the source material. Dumbo got the biggest makeover of them all, overcoming some of the original's ageing shortcomings, but unfortunately creating all new problems in the process.

But Lion King 2.0 finds no such failings in its predecessor. Whole lines, shots and scenes are reproduced, and any alterations are superficial. Which makes you wonder why they bothered.

The second major takeaway is that this looks astounding. It is visually stunning - there is no denying this. And its schtick of real-looking animals singing and talking works surprisingly well. It's believable and beautiful and a technological marvel to think that everything in the film is ones and zeroes.

But emotionally, the 2019 Lion King doesn't hit as hard as the 1994 version. This could be due to the lack of surprises, or even a personal fault that comes from not being able to watch it and feel it the same way that 13-year-old me watched the original 25 years ago. But I suspect the photo-realistic approach means the CG animals don't emote like their cartoon counterparts did. This lack of anthropomorphism is noble, but the realism undersells the emotion.

It's certainly no fault of the voice cast. Ejiofor is magnificently malevolent as Scar, swapping Jeremy Irons' pantomime villainy for something truly disturbing and unsettling, which suits the mangy flea-ridden character design. His turn is the highlight in a killer line-up.

Glover is also great, not just in the musical numbers, but in the way his vocal approach to the character shifts from Hakuna Matata-singing wastrel to legitimate heir to the throne. Knowles-Carter brings a great fire to the grown-up version of Simba's childhood friend Nala, while Rogen and Eichner fill the large shoes of Pumbaa and Timon with ease (even if Rogen's singing leaves something to be desired).

The excellent cast certainly prevents the film being heartless. It still packs a punch in places, but not as much as the original. And ultimately that is the only yardstick upon which this film can be measured - how does 2019 stack up against 1994?

By this scale, The Lion King 2019 is beautiful yet unnecessary. It's stunning and majestic to behold - unlike anything you've really seen before - but its story has been told better and with more power and finesse by its predecessor.

The Secret Life Of Pets 2

(PG) ★★★

Director: Chris Renaud.

Cast: (voices of) Patton Oswalt, Eric Stonestreet, Jenny Slate, Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish, Harrison Ford, Nick Kroll, Bobby Moynihan, Lake Bell, Ellie Kemper, Dana Carvey.

Marvel's reboot of Lady & The Tramp was weird.

The first Secret Life Of Pets movie ran a long way on very little fuel. A less interesting retelling of the original Toy Story (with pets in place of toys), the film devolved into one long chase sequence (Mad Max: Furry Road, if you will). It was mostly fun and funny, but beyond that, it was short on depth or themes or anything hugely memorable beyond its cackling yet cute supervillain Snowball the fluffy white bunny.

The second one at least digs deeper with its themes, and tries harder with its plotting, weaving three weirdly separate stories into a loose bow at the end. It's a stretch, but they're trying, and it all moves at an enjoyable-enough rate to keep the little ones from fidgeting for most of its brisk 86 minutes.

A third of the film focuses on Max (Oswalt, stepping in for Louis CK who was #MeTooed out of the role) and Duke (Stonestreet), the foes-turned-friends from the first movie. These odd-couple dogs (and their largely anonymous owners) now have a little human in their lives, which causes Max to stress endlessly about the child's welfare.

The other two strands of plot revolve around Snowball (Hart) and a shih tzu named Daisy (Haddish) trying to rescue a circus tiger (yes, really), while Gidget the Pomeranian (Slate) attempts to retrieve a toy from an apartment full of cats.

These disconnected plot threads are as strange and disparate as they sound, and it's only in the last 10 minutes that they get tied together. Even then, it's an unconvincing knot. It leaves you with the feeling of having just watched three TV shows edited together.

The saving grace is that each of the plots is interesting and brings something important to the table. The Duke-Max arc contains the heart of the film, Snowball's subplot has the action and tension, and Gidget's story is the most comedic. They don't gel together, but individually they're solid.

Hart is once again 'best in show' as Snowball, but he gets a good run for his money from Ford as a farm dog named Rooster (and if there's one important question to take away from Pets 2 it's "why the hell doesn't Harrison Ford do more voice acting?"). Oswalt is an improvement on Louis CK, Slate is again great as Gidget, and Haddish is a strong addition to the cast.

As per the original, there's a strong Looney Tunes vibe in the action, and once again, many of the best laughs come from the animals-as-humans gags. The action sequences aren't as strong this time around, and Snowball's growth from supervillain to superhuman is cool (even if it feels a little like a "superheroes are so hot right now" cash-in).

Overall, it's not a terrible film, but it's such a weird mix of pieces that it you can't help but wonder if this is a couple of scripts mashed into one. Where one subplot is dealing with life and death at the hands of an evil Russian, another is about looking after a small child. Where one is dealing with a room full of cats, another is learning to stress less and confront your fears. It's a bizarre mix of stakes and priorities, and the film can be jarring as it moves from one plot strand to the other.

Writer Brian Lynch and director Renaud come close to pulling it all together, but it falls short. Yet even while it fails to be a linear and layered story, The Secret Life Of Pets 2 still manages to be entertaining, humourous, and it doesn't outstay its welcome.