Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, it's Jan here!
As I said in my review, The Secret Life of Pets is basically Toy Story for animals, with
Duke as Buzz Lightyear and Max as Woody, but there are also some pretty cool references
to other movies as well as Illuminations' own Minions and Despicable Me films.
So, in this video, I'm going to look at some of the best easter eggs the filmmakers snuck
into the movie and if you spotted any others, I'd love to hear about them in the comments
below.
There will of course be a few spoilers ahead, so if you want to avoid those you can click
or tap up in the top right of the screen for my spoiler-free review of the movie.
Minions is Illumination's most successful movie to date so, as well as making the hilarious
short film Mower Minions, which plays before the main movie, the studio's animators also
included a good number of Minions easter eggs in The Secret Life of Pets itself.
There's a Minions toy which you can see on this boy's bedside table as well as another
one that's out of shot, as well as a Minions magnet on the fridge in Katie's apartment
and further down the fridge there's a postcard featuring the Minions' favourite food, a banana!
Plus, during the mid-credits scene the pug Mel wears a Minions fancy dress outfit to
a party at the apartment of the head-banging poodle Leonard.
In the scene where Duke drags Max around by the lead, the song "Happy" can be heard playing
in a taxi cab in the background.
"Happy" was one of numerous songs that Pharrell Williams composed and performed for the soundtrack
of Despicable Me 2 and was nominated for Best Original Song at the Oscars.
The name Zarelli's, which was the Italian restaurant where Gru went on a disastrous
date in Despicable Me 2, appears on the streets of New York though this time it's Zarelli's
Shoes.
There's a poster for Illumination's next animated feature, Sing, on the back of the bus that
Snowball drives when he chasing after the Animal Control truck.
Sing is a musical comedy set in a world entirely inhabited by animals and stars Matthew McConaughey,
Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane and Scarlett Johansson among many others.
And during that scene, the way the Flushed Pets gang swarm onto the bridge and slide
down cables, readying themselves to attack Max the dog, has echoes of the scene towards
the end of Rise of the Planet of the Apes where the apes overrun Golden Gate Bridge.
And the killer instincts of the crazy bunny Snowball and the way he attacks the Animal
Control officer are a nice nod to the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog from Monty Python And
The Holy Grail, and his demented laughter also reminded me of the evil bunny Boingo
from Hoodwinked.
There's a visual shout-out to Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror film The Birds via a framed
poster you can glimpse, suitably enough, in the home of the budgerigar Sweet Pea.
There's a lovely little homage to the end of director Billy Wilder's classic romantic
comedy Some Like It Hot when the old Basset Hound Pops asks Chloe where she's from, and
she replies, "Dude I'm a cat", to which Pops says: "Well, nobody's perfect".
That's actually the closing line from Some Like It Hot, which Joe E Brown's character
says to Jack Lemmon after Lemmon, who's disguised as a woman, reveals that he can't marry Brown
as he's actually also a man!
And there's a cool reference to Marilyn Monroe, who also starred in Some It Hot, in the painting
of Gidget in her apartment that's inspired by Andy Warhol's famous "Marilyn Diptych".
There's an hilarious riff on the movie Grease in the sausage factory scene where we see
a fantasy sequence of sausages singing and dancing to the hit musical's closing song
"We Go Together".
On top of that, the choreography and geometric shapes in the sausage song-and-dance scene
also pay homage to the musical numbers staged by famed director and musical choreographer
Busby Berkeley, whose movies include 42nd Street and Babes In Arms.
Director Chris Renaud cameos in the movie as the voice of the guinea pig Norman who
spends the movie trying to find his way back home through the ventilation shafts in Max's
apartment block.
Renaud's daughter Kiely also cameos as the voice of Molly.
And Jane The Virgin star, Jaime Camil, plays Fernando, the star of Gidget's favourite telenovela,
La pasión de la pasión!
So guys, did you spot any other interesting easter eggs in The Secret Life of Pets and
what did you think of the movie?
Let me know in the comments below.
And if you enjoyed this, do like, share and subscribe and also check out my easter egg
playlist or you might like to check out some amazing deleted scenes from the animated movies
Finding Dory and Zootopia in my deleted scenes playlist.
Thanks for watching and see ya next time.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!