Domestic celebrities can enhance the viewing experience when they make characters in overseas animations sound local, but things can sometimes go wrong.

At a giant venue at Beijing's 751 Park, a stage was decorated like a replica of an apartment building in New York.

Then, a few minutes after the event host appeared from the door, three windows opened, with comedian Chen Peisi, actor Feng Shaofeng and Taiwan singer-actress Amber Kuo appearing from them.

Each of the guests then hugged a furry creature resembling the animal characters they perform in the voice-overs for the upcoming Hollywood animation sequel The Secret Life of Pets 2, which will open across the Chinese mainland on Friday.

In the film, Chen is the voice of the conceited rabbit Snowball, while Feng dubs the canine protagonist Max, and Kuo lends her voice to Gidget, a white Pomeranian.

As well as the three celebrities, the film also features renowned director Feng Xiaogang and actress Ma Li, who lend their voices to two of the major animal characters in the Mandarin version.

At a news conference held in the Chinese capital on June 25, the stars tried to strike a chord with local audiences through sharing personal stories about raising pets.

Meanwhile, latest data from the box-office tracker Maoyan showed that the Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment production has topped the presale box-office charts for animation features as of Friday.

Comments on review aggregator Douban, an important reference point for fans to select their weekend viewing, also suggested that the film had drawn the highest number of potential theatergoers for its opening day.

For most industry observers, the film typifies the latest efforts by foreign animation productions to grab attention in China, the world's second-largest movie market.

Jiang Yong, a Beijing-based analyst, says that using Chinese celebrities for the Mandarin voice-overs is a pivotal part of the local marketing strategy for imported animation films.

"And, despite the fact that most adult viewers, especially those in their 20s or 30s, are used to watching native language originals with subtitles, the Mandarin version is the top option for families with young children," adds Jiang.

But while stars can boost ticket sales, some of them have also sparked controversy, mostly due to skepticism surrounding their inadequate voice-over techniques.

In late June, auteur Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away - the first Japanese animation to win an Oscar and a Berlin International Film Festival Golden Bear - also used domestic celebrities to boost its popularity.

The film, which was originally produced in 2001, had not been released on the Chinese mainland before its June 21 opening.

To ensure the film's success, the distributors made sure that, in addition to its original Japanese version, there was a Mandarin version with an all-star cast comprising actresses Zhou Dongyu, Wang Lin, actors Jing Boran and Peng Yuchang, and director Tian Zhuangzhuang.

The film dominated China's box office for a week until it was knocked down by Marvel's Spider-Man: Far from Home.

Meanwhile, the Mandarin version evoked mixed reviews online.

One netizen on Douban said that the 29-year-old Jing's dubbing for Haku - a deity with the avatar of a teenage boy in the film - sounded "much older" than the character, which became a distraction that affected the viewing experience.

Speaking about the trend for introducing local voice-overs into foreign films, a veteran of the business, Cao Xiaohui, the deputy head of the animation institute at the Beijing Film Academy, says voice-overs are an important way to create ambience and develop characters.

"And the best way to do a voice-over is to bring all the artists together on the set. So, when one is speaking his lines, he can perform much better and with natural reactions if the others playing opposite him are there."

But as stars usually have tight schedules, it's hard to bring them all together at the same time and place.

"So, you can see from most promotional clips stars wear headsets and read from a copy of a script alone in a sound-recording studio. And, for those who are not professional enough, it's easy for the process to become an exercise in line-reading rather than a voice-over performance," says Cao.

Also, because some stars have strong accents, it can sometimes sound weird, he says, to hear cartoon characters speak like that in a standard Mandarin version, he adds.

Li Baochuan, a researcher of animation history at Hangzhou Normal University, echoes Cao's views on the need for good voice-over work when he recalls that the 1999 animation Lotus Lantern gained huge success, partly thanks to its star-studded voice-over cast of more than 10 celebrities, including Jiang Wen, Chen Peisi and Zhu Shimao.

"It became a game-changer that ushered in a wave of big-budget animations that started to use celebrities to enhance the films. And veteran actors, who have stage performance experience, have proved that they can do a better job."