Despicable Me is a decent movie that falls victim to 5 key flaws: A marketing campaign that gives away all the best parts, I generally don’t like Steve Carell, boring minions, bland and lifeless animation and it’s in 3D.
Due to the incessant advertising, I felt like I already watched the entire movie before I even stepped foot into the theater. The first two times I saw the trailer, I laughed out loud. The idea and premise of the movie is great, who doesn’t like a good, funny, villain? Gru (Carell) makes a great bad guy, someone who is succeeds in his schemes, only problem is he thinks small, instead of stealing the real Statue of Liberty he steals the one from Vegas. His latest scheme shoots for the moon – literally. After several failures he becomes obsessed with the idea of stealing the Moon. Vector (Jason Segel), the younger, flashier villain is getting in his way.
I didn’t like any of the voice acting work, especially Carell. His voice came off as whiny and a scratchy. He sounded like he was bored by what he was doing. The movie’s heart comes in the form of 3 little Orphan girls Gru uses for one of his schemes. The minions in this movie are one note little yellow creatures who don’t “speak” it’s a one joke gag, but there is too much screen time devoted to them, really at the expense of everything else.
The animation looks fine, it’s sharp, but the colors seem a bit muted and everything looks really lifeless and unimaginative. The 3D is technically proficient I don’t have anything negative to say other than what I always do is that 3D just makes movie characters “weirdly” small. When I see a movie in a theater, I want the full big screen affect and 3D just doesn’t provide that.
Despicable Me is a paint by the numbers family film that doesn’t strive to be great or contain any kind of passion.
Final Grade C
EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 7.10.2010
“Despicable Me” is a family film with good 3-D about a man(child) who wants to be the best villain. To get a needed device, he adopts three young girls, but things change. A familiar storyline and not for sensitive little ones.
GRADE = “A-“