Despicable Me

It's not Toy Story 3, by a long shot. It doesn't reach for the stars in any way, but you know, it's ok that it doesn't. There's something to be said for a film succeeding in what it's trying to be.

Universal doesn't have its own animation branch, it just co-produces with other studios, usually smaller independent ones like Focus Features. This film is brought to us by newcoming animated studio Illumination Entertainment, started by Chris Meledandri, previous head of 20th Century Fox Animation, makers of such films as the Ice Age trilogy and Horton Hears a Who, and the Simpsons Movie. Some rumored projects of Illumination are 'the lorax' (sigh) and Where's Waldo. So Illumination Entertainment has given us a film that doesn't try to be anything groundbreaking or even extraordinarily creative but accomplishes its goals as a silly children's movie with heart. But in a way it's disappointing that an animated film from a new studio doesn't try to do anything new and out there since it has no reputation to start with. Like the rest it doesn't look at animation with any ambition to make new and interesting films by expanding the art form that is animation, it's basically just doing what all the other studios are doing, making good looking CGI with a dreamworks parody inspired premise and humor with a touch of emotional story telling inspired by Pixar. It seems the only thing it respects about animation is it ability to bring in muchas muchas bucks. I mean Julie andrews for a character that has barely 5 lines? Way unnecessary. But at least the animation itself is very impressive and of a good quality as well as having an interesting design, particularly the space ships.

But muchas dollars it certainly got over its first weekend, though that's not surprising as its an animated family film, and considering its competition. The new monster action thriller predators went almost completely under the radar, and it easily topped last weeks overrated and overpaid cultural embarrassment that is the Twilight movies and the horrifying fantasy adaption disaster that was Last Airbender.

If you've seen a trailer you know the story. It's the Grinch or 'cold hearted man has his heart changed when he interacts with children' story, except this time his character is a parody of a supervillian. At first glance you might think the supervillian side really is just a character trait or a fuel for parody humor while the real shape of the story is around Gru's interaction with the orphan children he adopts, but there's a lot of detail that goes into the super villian aspect of the story, and it does make for some cool animation designs.

Gru's character makes the entire movie. He's an amusing character that's surprisingly stable, and Steve Carell does a fantastic job bringing him to life. But the 3 little girls aren't interesting enough as real characters themselves and border on annoying. (The middle one, eccentric Edith in the only slightly interesting girl, the other two just play the roles of the little cutsy one and older defensive one) As a result your feelings for the girls are completely through Gru, they annoy you when they annoy Gru, and you care about them when Gru cares about them, but you feel nothing for them personally. But my god, the character of Vector, Gru's archrival, is just irritating all the way through. Sorry Jason Segal.

On a humor level, aside from the parody supervillian James bond-esque background, it's not laugh at loud funny, but it is silly enough for kids but on a level that can still relatively entertain adults and at least it's not reference jokes. There's also the matter of the minions, the little yellow babbling creatures added to give the film more child level silly humor as well as great toys to market. I usually hate this in children's films, but I have to admit, the minions are funny and they give a lot of life to the film. Even the silly physical humor they do is funny enough but doesn't drag on so long that it becomes unbearably annoying. They are just little touches to make a scene more funny.

This is not a film to look at incredibly deeply. No character including Gru is extremely developed. It's humor and emotion are right on the screen, but it terms of story you can see how everything can be expanded on. What is Gru's relationship with the Scientist, why did he want to be a supervillian, why are all Gru supervillian exploits so few and minor, where did he get the Minions, why does Vector want to be a supervillian, what's margo's emotional turmoil, whats the deal with Gru's mom? All of these could have added to make a bigger and possibly more interesting story, but maybe it's best that they didn't. Ultimately it is a story we heard before and had they tried to make even more serious than it was, it probably would have come off pretentious and unnecessary.

If I was a fan of 3D, I would give this film a lot of credit for its great use and quality of 3D. It does a couple of the 'leaping at the audience' gags but not too many and there's a short at the beginning of the credits that's clever use for the 3D, but not as good as Pixar's short Night and Day that was shown at the beginning of Toy Story 3. But I'm not a fan of 3D, I don't think it's worth the extra 4 bucks and simply find it a means of extortion, and frankly most of the time while you're watching the movie you can't tell the difference. But at least this was shot for 3D, it's not one of the cop outs that make it during post production (clash of the titans, last airbender)

There's really no reason to see this movie if you don't have kids or don't care about animation. Everything in here has been done (a lot of it in Disney's Kim Possible) The story is generic, but the silly humor and character of Gru make this a fun family film, but probably not suitable for a repeated viewing. Also the animation is well done.