Pets is a Disney+ documentary about pets that struggles to justify its existence. You can get almost everything this flick does in an hour of YouTube cat videos. Cats being sweet, cats being crazy, cats at the vet, feral cats finding a new home, etc. Plus dogs and birds and pigs.

Ostensibly, it’s about how pets shape our lives. It’s broken down into two types of content: cute kids talking about their pets in cute ways and vignettes of adults out in the world with their best friends. It talks about how they brighten our days and how their time with us is too brief.

If the film didn’t have its final fifteen minutes of sadness, there’d be almost no reason to watch it. It doesn’t show us any dead animals (thankfully) but it talks earnestly about pets getting sick and how their deaths hurt. It’s genuine and sweet and caring and sad, especially the footage of the very old dog who clearly doesn’t have much time left. But it also has an uplifting segment about sending our pet’s names into the air on wings of rehabilitated falcons and owls.

But back to the cute goofy movie about dogs on a kayak adventure or whatever. These aren’t bad stories, but they don’t do or say anything more than a thousand years of better YouTube videos have already done. Which is what brings the film back down to Earth.

There’s enough good, harmless cute stuff propped up by somber and heart-warming moments that justifies the doc’s existence. It also helps that the flick is only a few minutes past one hour on Disney+. I almost gave it a lower score but, hell, a bunch of cute kids talking about cute animals plus an emotional side were enough to get it over the hump.

Score: 76