Movie Review - Despicable Me
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2010 / 95 Minutes / PG
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz
Gru, the main character of the new animated film “Despicable Me”, is the sort of guy who would have a hideout in a hollowed out volcano and would enthusiastically describe it as a “lair”. He’s the sort of guy who’s not happy unless he can get his hands on a space laser. He’s got an army of minions. He steals major landmarks (well, at least their smaller Las Vegas versions). He carries a freeze ray with him at all times and has a stuffed crocodile for a sofa. When he watches a Bond movie, he’s obviously rooting for Dr. No.
And yet, Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) isn’t nearly as bad as he pretends. He may freeze people, but he never kills anyone. He steals things, but never anything vital. And his minions are actually sweet, boneheaded yellow guys that are as cute and loyal as little puppies. So when Gru hatches a diabolical scheme to steal a shrink ray from a rival supervillain (Vector, voiced by Jason Segel) that involves three impossibly adorable orphan girls it doesn’t take someone with the intellect of Gru’s mad scientist cohort Dr. Nefario (voiced by Russell Brand) to see where all of this is going to lead. Of course Gru has his heart melted by these darling little moppets. If he didn’t, there wouldn’t be much of a movie.
If I’ve made the movie sound like a bizarre cross-pollination of “Dr. No” and “Three Men and a Little Lady”, well, then I’ve succeeded in describing it quite well. It’s an odd film, but one that children and their adults should eat up like a big bowl of cotton candy. It’s a whole lot of fun, full of gags that are often surprisingly dark for a children’s film (at one point the movie momentarily insinuates that one of the girls has been killed in an iron maiden…for laughs!). Like cotton candy, even though it’s highly enjoyable, it’s frankly TOO sweet at times (the little girls ARE insanely cute, even Satan would probably change his maleficent ways after a week in their presence). Also, just like cotton candy, the film is largely just fluff. Entertaining fluff, but fluff nevertheless. Dreamworks takes a lot of cues from their competitor Pixar (I doubt it’s mere coincidence that the youngest of these tykes looks almost identical to Boo from “Monster’s Inc.) but they’re cues that all other animation houses SHOULD be taking. The movie does tip the scales from sweet to syruppy on occasion, but it does have a great deal of heart and I cared a lot more about these characters than I had any right to.
The only thing keeping this movie from sinking entirely beneath its own sticky sweetness and newborn-puppy cutesiness is its sometimes cutting, often hilarious humor. There are a lot of clever little touches, especially inside Gru’s house/evil lair (the crocodile sofa isn’t his only bit of visually inventive home decor, let me just leave it at that) and that of Vector (I love that, after he steals the Great Pyramid, he paints it to look like the sky and sets it behind his ultra-modern house). Gru’s little, yellow minions are responsible for some great gags as well (though, shades of Pixar yet again, they look a little too much like the three-eyed Claw Machine toys from the “Toy Story” movies).
A lot of this refreshing edginess has to do with the film’s writers and directors, but casting Steve Carell, Russell Brand and Jason Segel also helps make the film’s candy coating a lot more palatable. Nor do they simply fall back on the personas that have largely defined their careers. Instead of being a clueless boob like Carell’s other characters, Gru has a goofy Eastern European accent and a puckish air about him. Sure, he’s kind of a failure as a supervillain, but that’s because he’s too much of a softie, not because he’s one of Carell’s standard morons. Likewise, Russell Brand’s usual prankster bravado is traded in for borderline-senile bluster (his voice is nearly undetectable here) and Segel trades his usual lanky dork for a shrimpy, overconfident nerd. Seeing (well, HEARing) these gifted comedians do some new schtick brings a whole other level of entertainment to the movie.
The plot is pretty much nonexistent and the film lacks the strong themes and metaphorical underpinnings of Pixar’s best efforts (although I did like its sweet message to parents about appreciating their children a bit more), but the strength of the jokes, the likability of the characters (thanks to the writing and performances), the eye-popping wonder of the 3-D (the roller-coaster scene is, for my money, what 3-D is supposed to do) and, hell, I’ll admit it, the winning cuteness of the whole affair salvages it.
Besides, how can you resist a movie that’s basically “Three Adorable Girls and a Blofeld”? It doesn’t even have a traditional hero to spoil the fun (which was another little touch I found wonderfully refreshing).
