Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
In the penthouses, sidewalks, and backalleys of New York City, the cats and dogs are living lives more complicated than any human realizes. This is the premise of The Secret Life of Pets, the animated movie opening this weekend. It was also the premise of the oft-forgotten 1988 Disney movie Oliver and Company, a movie that seems awfully familiar to Pets and is surely worth your time this weekend.
Let’s look at those similarities, though, huh?
Uh oh! Pets out in the city! Walking those streets of New York on four legs!
The Secret Life of Pets is about a dog named Max, while Oliver and Company is about a cat named Oliver. Case closed, they’re two separate ideas, right? Yea, not so fast. Max is voiced by Louis CK, whose TV show Louie is set in New York. Oliver and Company features songs by Billy Joel, a performer synonymous with New York City. CONVINCED YET? Well look no further than the female leads: in Pets it’s a fluffy white dog named Gidget (voiced by Jenny Slate). In Oliver, it’s a fluffy white poodle named Georgette (voiced by Bette Midler).
Look, The Secret Life of Pets may well end up being okay. But it’s from the people who made Despicable Me, which spawned Minions, and none of those are good movies. Meanwhile, Oliver is a sweet movie with a lot of really fun musical numbers (did we mention Billy Joel?) that had the sad misfortune of getting released the year before Disney completely revitalized the state of modern-day animation with The Little Mermaid.
I think it’s time for a revival. Oliver and Company should be enjoying a comeback as one of Disney’s most underrated features. Too few movies feature the voices of Billy Joel, Bette Midler, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Richard Mulligan of Empty Nest fame. FAR TOO FEW.
