Despicable Me

This is one of those movies I never really had much of a desire to see. I never paid close attention to the trailers nor was I interested in doing so. I kept confusing this movie with Megamind, a similar movie that comes out later this year. One had Steve Carrell and one had Will Ferrell and I could not be bothered to tell them apart. What eventually drew me into watching it, besides a free ticket and desire to get out of the house, was the opinion of a few friends who told me the movie was a a nice distraction and that it made them smile. With my own smiles in short supply, I thought I would give it all a shot.

Someone has stolen the Pyramids and replaced them with a blow-up version of them. Could a new super villain just have made his mark? Will the reigning super villain, Gru(Carrell) be dropped to number 2? It just may be. However, Gru has a plan that will change it all. He is going to steal a shrink ray, shoot himself to the moon, shrink it and then steal it and hold it for ransom. The problem is, Gru is not at the top of his game, his cohort is nearing 100yrs old and all of his little minions seem far more interested in being ridiculously cute than anything else. Plus, the new super villain, Vector, is younger, faster and far more advanced, with an impenetrable fortress, at least impenetrable to Gru. Vector appears to have a weakness for Girl Scout cookies. Gru sees this opportunity as a chance for him to get into Vector's palace and take the shrink ray. In order to do so, Gru has to adopt the girls who sold Vector the cookies. Gru just wants to use the girls, but in true animated movie fashion, he starts to feel for them because, well they make him laugh. He has a wonderful day at the amusement park with them and slowly becomes attached to them, mostly the little baby girl because she loves unicorns and it just adorable. The girls are in a ballet class, but their recital is the same day as Gru's moon launch and with pressure from the Evil bank and his cohort, whatever will Gru do?

Despicable Me is a sweet, adorable little movie that seems perfectly suited for the word cute. I am typically against the word cute in describing a movie. it is a word people use in absence of a real opinion. It is what people say for Romantic Comedies that were boring, but not horribly so. They use them for children's movies where they do not have a real opinion. When someone calls a movie "cute" I typically write off that movie. It is hard to avoid that word when talking about Despicable Me, though. First, you have these tiny yellow minions who speak in beeps and some sort of spoken Morse code with these adorable voices and they are all essentially precocious little children in yellow form. Then, you have the little children, one of which is a baby obsessed with unicorns. But if that is not enough, they give the little baby girl a fluffy stuffed unicorn and it is impossible not to think it is cute as she yells out with glee "It's so FLUFFY!!"

Steve Carrell is both funny and charming as the lovable loser super villain and Jason Segal is at times, obnoxious and at times totally rad man. The two guys only have a few scenes together but their completely different approaches to the movie blend perfectly. Segal has ramped up his energy level, whereas Carrell has lowered his. Carrell's odd accent does not ever get annoying, when I thought it would and in fact, there are times when I found things funny solely because of that accent. The other voices are provided by pretty funny people, but they do not enhance the story at all really. In fact, I could have done with anybody reading those lines and probably get the same idea.

It is hard to judge the animation because the last animated movie I saw was Toy Story 3 and Pixar is so far ahead of anyone else, it kind of is not fair. The animation here is nice. I really liked the look of the amusement park, and shooting it often in First Person point of view was a nice touch. The characters all had very distinct looks that perfectly suited the individual personalities, which is a nice plus for the idea of animation. They can make characters look exactly how they want and in a way that we understand why their personalities are that way. There is only one real action sequence and it looks fine. It is not super thrilling and I have seen far better looking scenes in recent animation, but the movie holds onto the cuteness factor all the way through.

Despicable Me is nothing special, but it has caught on with the general audience and I think that cuteness factor is a big reason. It is a nice safe family choice to see a movie. It will not challenge your emotions the way the last few Pixar movies have, but it is not dumb like so many of the Dreamworks movies are. It does not go into this weird Kubrickian place the way Happy Feet(My favorite non Pixar comedy of the last 6 or 7 years) does, and maybe it is better for it. it relies on the minions, the cute little girl and Steve Carrell's charming almost father role. I cannot fault it for that and when the movie was over, I did have a smile on my face, so I got exactly what I hoped to get from it. There is something to be said for that.

Final Grade: B-