Melissa Narvajas

I watched this movie on a whim thinking it was a light-hearted silly cat movie, similar to The Secret Life of Pets. I was pleasantly suprised of how wrong I was and how complex the plot became. It is very fast paced and unpredictable. Overall I enjoyed the movie and the animation was amazing but it is very misleading and I wouldn't recommend it to children under 13. There were dark themes shown such as abuse, alcoholism, totalitarianism, death and animal cruelty. I wouldn't compare it to Finding Nemo at all and I feel like a lot of people neglect the cultural differences and plot points in this film. Not everything needs to be explained or drawn out for you to understand and sometimes things are what they appear to be. Cape wasnt angry with Blanket about lying about his mother because he said it himself "I understand why, you did it to protect me". The film is mature and gives proper moments to grieve but keeps the characters true to themselves. Now to the bad. My two minor complaints is the English dub really is awful and the ending is not the best message to send to children because the life expantancy of outdoor cats is significantly shorter than indoor cats. My biggest complaint is the humans. The humans in this movie, even the first owner are not the best examples of proper pet ownership and leaving a window open is careless. She kicked out the stray cat her other cat bonded with and it hurt the cat so bad he ran away to find him. Then after she let a cat die in her care, shes off to work every day and leaves her kitten bored in the apartment all day with no stimulation, hence why it runs away. Granted the villain in the movie is terribly great but even she was neglectful at times. Even though some humans are cruel, the whole world isnt and I felt the movie deserved at least one solid human character. This must be a cultural difference but it seemed like everyone in this movie didn't really love cats the way some of us do..which was the whole point of why we clicked to watch it and probably why for the poor reviews. That was disappointing and that's its biggest problem, especially marketing to American families. The message of the movie is intricately beautiful yet melancholy; that home is not a place but where your heart is. This movie is not for the faint of heart but if you watch with an open mind I'm sure any person would appreciate it as I did.