Despicable Me: Movie Review

Despicable Me is far from despicable.  Universal Pictures newest animated adventure brings a slew of great voice actors to a great script and two break-out directors. Steve Carrell (of The Office) fame voices the lead, Gru, a supervillian who wants nothing more than to be respected for what he does.  When a younger supervillian by the name of Vector (voiced by How I Met Your Mother’s Jason Segal) who has managed to steal the great pyramid of Gaza.  In response Gru sets out to steal the Moon!  Gru’s only problem, Vector, his arch nemesis, possesses the shrink ray required to shrink the moon to a small enough size to actually steal. Gru hatches a master plan of adopting 3 sisters who regularly sell cookies to Vector to sneak into his place so he can get the shrink ray. What happens next changes Gru from being “Superbad” to “Superdad.”

The story is heart-warming and touching and the animation is phenomenal.  The script is definitely at the top of the game for veteran screenwriting team Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul who have teamed together before to bring half-assed pieces of work to screen such as Bubble Boy, The Santa Claus 2, Horton Hears a Who! & College Road Trip. So in comparison to their previous scripts Despicable Me is by far a great  and hilarious masterpiece.

Directed by fairly novice directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud the animation and the flow of the story just blew me away.  Not only did they provide 95 minutes of pure hilarity but did it in such a touching way that was engaging to young and old. The story was also very original which is nice to see in children’s movies as most animated movies that come out are a dime a dozen.  I personally loved Toy Story 3 but after seeing Despicable Me I almost think its better, not necessarily content wise per se but because of the originality aspect that Despicable Me had over Toy Story 3.

If you read my reviews regularly you will notice that I hate 3D so much. To me it’s a gimmick and not worth the extra money. That is not the case in Despicable Me. This is the first 3D movie, next to How To Train Your Dragon that I can say is worth the extra few bucks. The 3D was phenomenal and actually added to the film rather than detract from it. The ending, during the credits, was also hilarious, while slightly gimmicky it was still a lot of fun.

This movie is a great family flick. Everyone at the Premiere loved it. I loved it. The strangers next to my buddy Richard loved it. The children and parents behind and in front of me loved it. It’s a great family film and I definitely recommend it for all.

I also love the fact that Gru kinda looks like Alfred Hitchcock!
4.5 out of 5.