Despicable Me
My family and I went from completely uninterested in to completely in love with the animated film Despicable Me in a matter of months. When we saw the first trailer, in which the pyramid was stolen, we all three had the same reaction—“Bleh.” It didn’t look very interesting at all.
As more and more previews were released, we grew to get slightly interested—even excited—about seeing it. The addition of children, Steve Carell, and those little green minions made it look much more enticing than the typical battle of man vs. man. Knowing that the hero was actually an anti-hero—not a common theme in a cartoon!—was also intriguing.
We finally got around to seeing the movie yesterday and it was absolutely adorable. (Spoilers ahead.) Steve Carell’s character Gru wants desperately to be the most evil villain of all time; he just isn’t cutting it. He happens to be a really nice guy—loyal to his lab partner and even loving to his minions, to a point (they are experimented on, though not really inhumanely). His furniture was probably the most disturbing part of the film to me, as it was made up of seemingly real dead animals.
None of the villainy was too much for our four-year-old, making it pretty family friendly overall (though I wasn’t too keen on some of the weapons, as I never like them in films; that said, most of them were just goofy rather than destructive). Most of the peril is pretty mild, and no one dies. The three little girls in the film are adorable as well—especially the youngest one—and Gru makes a hilarious yet doting father by the end of the movie. Though he first adopts the girls to help him acquire a weapon as part of an evil plot, Gru eventually gives up his greatest plan—one he’s been working on pretty much his entire life—to save the lives of his new daughters.
A few things left me a bit disappointed; I was hoping for a bit more of Julie Andrews as Gru’s mother, for example, and wanted to see him prove her wrong—which he pretty much did; but she was scarcely in the movie. Russell Brand wasn’t utilized much either as the scientist, which was a shame since, whether you like him or not, Brand can definitely bring another level of zaniness to the room if you let him.
Still, the film was very funny and entertaining, with a loving message by its ending. Its animation was a lot of fun, with Gru truly resembling Carell. The mother in me predictably cried when Gru finally read the girls a bedtime story and kissed them goodnight at the end—something they’d been asking for all along—effectively paving the way toward his newfound daddy-hood. The only question is, what will Gru do now? Give up his villainous ways for parenthood and get a “real” job, or carry on with his dastardly acts?
