Thursday, July 22, 2010

Despicable Me – Review


As I stated in a previous post, I wanted to see Despicable Me out of curiosity. The early trailers didn’t reveal much, but just enough to whet the appetite. As the time of release drew near, we got more of a glimpse. We knew that a super villain suddenly is in charge of three children, all adorable girls. In fact, the tag line according to IMDb is “Superbad. Superdad.”

It could also be, “The Pink Panther meets The Spy Who Loved Me.

I enjoyed this movie very much. Yes, it’s a cartoon, but I think we’ve established that I kinda like those. I love watching the craft of storytelling in its purest form. . .yeah, I’ll go with that. It had action, adventure, fluffy moments when the youngest girl wraps herself around the audience, and, surprisingly, quite a timely moral for our get-ahead-at-all-costs society today.

It was a teensy predictable in parts, but also held some surprises.

Steve Carell voices the main character, Gru, and does it so effectively, I would have never know it was him. As a writer, I love what they did with this character. Remember that a villain must have a reason to be bad.

You may want to take a tissue, although I didn’t blubber through this movie like I did Toy Story 3

I didn’t see it in 3D. I’m reserving my hard-earned cash for movies where it makes sense to shake hands with the characters. My choice didn’t ruin the experience, although I could see where one scene would have benefitted in the WOW-I’m-in-the-movie effect. I may have needed an empty popcorn bucket afterward.

Rating_star

I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars because of the predictability factor. But it didn’t ruin the movie for me, and there were enough surprises to keep my writer-brain from overanalyzing. At least, until I got home. :)

You can view the trailer at the IMDb site.

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