Despicable Me Review

After How to Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3 achieved being the most accessable films for audiences this year, Despicable Me tries to capture the same crowd, but with less clever wit and a more convoluted storyline. The film flips the idea of the standard hero on its ear, with a villain, Gru plotting to steal the moon who ends up adopting a group of orphans to achieve that goal. Obviously, shenanigans ensue, and Gru ends up growing close to the orphans and becoming quite a great hero.

Despite an unexpected premise, the film plays out pretty much the exact same way you'd envision it. It's entirely too predictable, and doesn't have much tasteful comedy or action, which is necessary with this sort of storyline. The film tries to emulate Pixar, but ultimately comes off as a half-assed rip off. The main character being a villain makes everything so less relatable. It's not at all creepy for a large Russian to adopt three young girls, right? That's pretty normal.

The production values are not very good either, which I could've forgiven if the film was better. They go with all the stationary angles and simple lighting, and it's just so cute I might puke. The main theme from the film is pretty nice, but it'd be nice to see anything match up to that. The voice cast doesn't really add much to anything. In most reviews I'd go into extreme detail, but here, it's pretty straight forward. If you're a little kid, you'll probably like it. If not, then you'll leave the theatre in the same sort of mood I was in.

C+