Film Review: 'Despicable Me'

It's not very often any more that I sit down and watch a children's movie all the way through (the exceptions being, of course, the Harry Potter films recently, and every now and then when a film from my own childhood is playing on TV, like A Bug's Life or Finding Nemo.). And even in this case, I didn't watch the entire thing, for reasons that may become apparent later in this post.

So here it is, the first film review for a while: Disney/Pixar's Despicable Me.

Despicable Me

Official Website

Wikipedia

The Plot: In a happy suburban neighborhood surrounded by white picket fences with flowering rose bushes, sits a black house with a dead lawn. Unbeknownst to the neighbors, hidden beneath this home is a vast secret hideout. Surrounded by a small army of minions, we discover Gru, planning the biggest heist in the history of the world. He is going to steal the moon. (Yes, the moon!) Gru delights in all things wicked. Armed with his arsenal of shrink rays, freeze rays, and battle-ready vehicles for land and air, he vanquishes all who stand in his way. Until the day he encounters the immense will of three little orphaned girls who look at him and see something that no one else has ever seen: a potential Dad. The world's greatest villain has just met his greatest challenge: three little girls named Margo, Edith and Agnes. [taken from IMDB]

The Review: As far as children's films go, this one isn't a terribly good one. True, what's come before it has been pretty good (Toy Story, anyone?). However, there's a difference between coming up with something mildly entertaining, and putting up an hour and a half's worth of schizophrenic, loud, cartoony nonsense. You often hear people say a kid's film is good if the adults can get something out of it, and while there is a message in there somewhere, it's buried deep underneath all the slapstick, the bad, corny jokes, the unlikable characters (or just flat out boring, as in the girls' case), and the pretty ordinary script. They are the things that really bothered me while watching the film - the graphic design and animation, other than being way too fast for me to concentrate on properly, weren't bad, if not almost too kitschy and maybe a little stock-standard. In other words, it wasn't all that remarkable.

Let's start with the obvious gripe - no matter how hard I tried, I could not get on board with any of the characters in this movie. Gru, this supposed super-villain with a kind streak, does not enough of either of those things to really make him an identifiable character, and given the simplicity of the film's plot you can already see the outcome of his relationships with the other characters (the girls, Dr. Nefario) and I guess knowing how it would all unfold in typical fashion makes it even harder to feel for any of them - you wait for something to change, to surprise you, and nothing does, and that's very disappointing. Of course he's initially resistant to the girls and only wants them to work for him, of course he doesn't understand children being an only child himself and also being a super-villain doesn't help your parenting prospects, but of course he falls in love with them and their sweet naivety near the end of the film and of course he becomes the best parent ever and they all live happily ever after, etc. The girls don't fair much better either, the poor dears, and their backstories are completely non-existent which is a real shame because wouldn't that pull on the heartstrings just that little bit more? It's never explained whether Margo, Edith and Agnes (nice names but aren't they a little too grandma-ish?) are actually sisters or just girls who are friends at the orphanage, and it's never explained how they became orphans, which would be helpful because they really don't have any other unique characterisation - Margo is the stock bossy eldest girl who directs the others and is naturally suspicious of their new dad; Edith is the stock tomboy who curiously is dressed in all-pink (gender-is-performative-blah-blah-blah) who likes all the scary things in Gru's house; and Agnes is just a little too young to understand that Gru is a BAD MAN and carries a toy unicorn everywhere and is meant to be that cute, non-sequitur character like a combination between Katie from Horton Hears a Who! and Boo from Monsters Inc., (i.e. we've seen it before) but I will admit that she had a couple of chuckle-worthy lines made only by the delivery of the voice actress, and they were the only parts of the film that I enjoyed. The other characters - Dr. Nefario, Vector, Mr. Perkins at the bank - were so flat and predictable they weren't worth worrying about. I wish they had made Miss Hattie's character a bigger one, seeing as out of all the 'villains' presented to us in the story, I think she was the most evil, being awful to the girls and locking them up in cardboard boxes because they were being annoying/being kids? Potential to explore the different kinds of evil that exist in the world goes begging - disappointing. I mean, she herself could have actually been a super-villain in leagues with Gru and Vector, using her position at the orphanage as a cover, right?

The other two issues I had with the film were the pacing (way too fast) and the script (awful, predictable, etc.) - one a more visual problem, the other of course a narrative problem. Additional to the both of these problems were the Minions, the kings of the slapstick in this film, but who also, to my mind, promoted a senseless amount of violence that is really unnecessary - I'm talking about laughing at each other's misfortunes and then being punched in the face for it, like it's light, but really, how can we be surprised when children hit each other and accuse one another of bullying when this kind of thing is promoted as funny? Cue comments about how the Three Stooges did it first, but I just think you can do away with that kind of thing altogether for children's films and be a lot better for it. 

So, suffice it to say that I wasn't terribly impressed with this movie, and lost interest in it towards the end so I missed out on seeing the girls' dance recital/Gru shrinking the moon scenes (not that I had to in order to follow what was happening afterwards). I wouldn't recommend it to my imaginary children; better they go outside and climb trees or play doll houses than sit in front of a pretty average, unimaginative, stock-standard baby-sitter-tools-of-the-trade flick such as Despicable Me. I can only hope that the sequel builds on from the original, but I won't hold my breath.

Out of Five:

1 out of 5