LOS ANGELES, July 6 — What do our pets get up to when we’re not there? Sleep, eat, mess up your stuff? According to The Secret Life of Pets, there’s much more to it than that.

What’s it about?

Lead character, lapdog Max, enjoys a life of luxury up until his owner Katie brings home another dog.

Lumbering great Dane Duke isn’t exactly welcome in Max’s life and, through a series of misadventures, they both end up in the dog pound.

Escape means getting sucked into an animal underworld and, while Max and Duke are trying to get away in one piece, the pair’s old friends are mounting another rescue operation.

Who’s in it?

American comedian Louis C.K. booked his biggest film role to date as Max, while Eric Stonestreet (Duke) comes off an Emmy-winning performance in Modern Family.

Leader of The Flushed Pets gang is white rabbit Snowball, played by comedian Kevin Hart of Ride Along and Top Five, while British comic Steve Coogan (Philomena) becomes cat boss Ozone.

Other animals are voiced by Ellie Kemper (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), Bobby Moynihan (Saturday Night Live), Lake Bell (Million Dollar Arm), Dana Carvey (Wayne’s World, Hotel Transylvania 2) and Hannibal Buress (The Angry Birds Movie), as well as Jenny Slate (Zootopia), Albert Brooks (Finding Dory), and Tara Strong (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic).

Who’s behind it?

Chris Renaud may have a cameo as a hapless guinea pig but in fact he’s known for co-directing the first two Despicable Me animated movies with Pierre Coffin, both films also coming out of Illumination Entertainment.

Co-directing with Renaud is Yarrow Cheney, for whom The Secret Life of Pets is a feature-length directorial debut. He steered short feature Puppy for the Despicable Me 2 Blu-ray and DVD.

Is it any good?

According to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, The Secret Life of Pets is certainly worth a watch, with an 84 per cent pre-release approval rating from a 6.3/10 average.

Metacritic’s metrics correspond with a 64 per cent average score, and following an early release in a handful of territories including the UK and Ireland, Hong Kong, Israel and Vietnam, over 2,300 IMDb users have rated it 6.7/10.

When’s it out?

A July 8 release beckons for the US and Canada, opening in South American territories Argentina and Chile from July 21. French audiences are invited to theatres from July 27, with Germany taking the film the next day. August could be a bumper month for TSLoP as China opens on August 2, Japan on August 11, and Brazil on the 25th; South East Asia gets it in Indonesia and the Philippines on August 24, and Singapore from September 1. — AFP-Relaxnews