Movie Review: Despicable Me
Sorry I haven’t been blogging this week, but it has been a lot of holiday cheer and food coma. I have been at my mothers house, who barely has electricity, much less any form of interlink connection. Normally this isn’t a problem, as I can head down to Borders and (ab)use their free WiFi. However, they have been crazy busy and were also closed early on the 24th and all day on the 25th (damn them for wanting to have a life and family. Don’t they know I need to get online and bitch about my dating life?) so I have been more or less stuck watching Law and Order reruns (my mom’s favorite show). I also spent a whole day at my sisters eating too much and watching my brother-in-law try to teach my mom how to use her new digital camera (I would be the one to do it, but he apparently has more tolerance for explaining where the power button is over and over. Also, I know I will be getting her “What does it mean when it does this?” calls for the next 23 months, so I am saving my energy).
Anyway, I spent yesterday with my best friend and his kids and we went to see the movie Despicable Me, a cartoon story about yet another evil super villain becoming a good guy thanks to some good hearted females. Sounds suspiciously like the story from Megamind, which came out about the same time. It’s weird how different studios come up with the same idea for a movie about the same time. However, I have worked in trend merchandise for the last eight and noticed that things seem to get popular all over the country almost simultaneously, so I guess it could be considered another example of convergent evolution. In other words, the time is right for a evil super villain to turn good, so different studios come up with the same concept at the same time. Also, this movie came out a couple weeks before Megamind.
Anyway, the story is about the less than lovable Gru, a pointy nosed super villain who is in danger of being supplanted by a younger, more energetic super villain named Vortex. He has his most dastardly plan to date foiled by Vortex and comes up with a plan to get it back on track that involves using three orphan little girls as a distraction. The girls are from the least humane orphanage ever, run by a woman graduate of the Cruella de Ville School of Social Interaction (this joke is particularly funny to me as I recently had it pointed out that a certain sister of a friend of mine whom I despise with the burning passion of 10,000 suns bears a shocking resemblance to Cruella in both appearance and demeanor) and forces the girls to sell cookies and tells them they will never get adopted. He passes what must be the most cursory background check of all time and gets the girls. Cutesy hi jinx ensue, Gru falls in love with the girls and being a single parent, and ends up a good guy (sort of).
Overall pretty entertaining, if more kid friendly than Megamind. My only real issue was in the treatment of the little girl characters. Gru had a ton of cool development stuff, including a number of flashbacks to a traumatized childhood where his mother constantly told him he sucked and would never amount to anything. However, while the girls were all supposed to be distinct personalities (one the sassy troublemaker, another the brainy mystery solver, the third the super cute comic relief) but there is no attempt at developing their characters whatsoever. Also, while Gru’s motivations are all pretty clear, you can’t figure out why the head of the orphanage does anything other than evil-for-evil’s-sake.
Let’s do the stars and black holes. Stars first. It’s a cartoon. One star. It stars a super villain. One star. Two words: shrink ray. One star. Two more words: freeze ray. One star. Gru is well developed and cool. One star. His comic relief minions were actually really funny and cool, not super annoying. One star. He makes the girls beds out of recycled WWI style bombs. One star. It’s overall fun to watch. One star. Total: eight stars.
Now the black holes. The story was a little too kid friendly. One black hole. The girl’s characters were really under developed. One BH. Vector, the competing super villain, was an annoying Bill Gates spoof who bugged me at every turn. One BH. The girls were involved in some kind of ballet recital and wore pink tutus. One black hole. The 3D effects were kind of weak and added nothing to the movie except my usual 3D headache. One black hole. Total: 5 black holes.
Net total, three stars. Good movie, entertaining, but not great. I saw it for 2 bucks and was glad for that. I’d say take your kids and be glad it’s a movie they will like that you can get a few laughs out of.
For the who win question, Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter versus Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I’m going to have to go with Buffy. Sure, Abe is taller with better reach and upper body strength, but Buffy is way more into cardio. Also, she is a Slayer. In truth, I’d like to see a Marvel like episode where they fight each other for a while and then team up to kill the bigger evil. (Buffy image courtesy of the TV show t-shirts category)
For today post, the question is Pee Wee Herman versus Sgt. Shultz from Hogan’s Heroes.
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