Bad Guy Gone Good: DESPICABLE ME 3

Despicable Me 3 is a bright cartoony machine, the best one in the series since its first installment way back in 2010. For over seven years now, the little yellow slapstick pill Minions (voiced by co-director Pierre Coffin) have been everywhere, helping boss Gru in a sequel and themselves in their spin-off prequel. In the process, the folks at Illumination animation have proved to be pretty good at making these movies (and only these movies, as their grating Secret Life of Pets and Sing show). This new one makes good use of its threadbare Saturday morning adventure comedy appeal, concocting B-plots for supporting characters and giving the lead a couple big problems to sort out in sitcom fashion that allows the colorful slapstick and neat invention to take center stage. There’s nothing groundbreaking or deep about the series, but need there be? It’s goofy, energetic, colorful, and full of funny little touches: ever-expanding bubblegum as a weapon of mass destruction, a secret hideout in a blimp accessible only by a sofa in a fake retirement home, a pig farm mansion concealing a supervillain armory, and a drone fleet of remaindered dolls from a forgotten 80’s oddity. These silly charms are enough to keep the story of a pathetic cartoon villain hanging up his evil ways for fatherly duties coasting on and on.

The plot is so simple. In a fun opening action sequence, new villain Balthazar Bratt (a purple-jumpsuit-wearing, keytar-playing, dance-battle-enjoying doofus voiced by Trey Parker) escapes a flying hijacked freighter before Anti-Villain League operatives Gru (Steve Carell) and Lucy (Kristen Wiig) can stop him. For this failure, they’re fired. Before they can fight to get their jobs back, there is the movie’s other development: Gru’s long lost twin brother, Dru. Apparently, there was a secret Parent-Trap-backstory situation happening here, with Gru’s mother (Julie Andrews) admitting that she got the bad end of the bargain. Gru is invited to take his family to the island nation of Freedonia (a neat reference to the Marx brothers’ fictitious Duck Soup setting) and meet this long-lost bro. No surprise, the guy turns out to be Gru’s opposite: happy-go-lucky, overeager to please, and with a full head of hair. The series’ usual directors and writers here provide Carell an opportunity to continue his pleasant, mushy-mouthed, vaguely-Slavic voice performance’s Peter Sellers’ tendencies in a double role distinguished mostly by how frowny or bubbly he makes any given line reading. Freedonia becomes a silly playground for Gru’s daughters (Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, and Nev Scharrel) and their small scenes – cute, flimsy stuff involving cheese rituals and unicorn hunts – while the grown-ups run around. You see, Dru is jealous of his brother’s infamy, and Gru hopes to use this to partner up and take down Bratt. Simple as that.

Bouncy 3D cartoon commotion in a slick wide frame moves things along, with heists and chases and all sorts of mad scrambling and shouting (the voice work is energetic and giggly), explosions and engines, and elaborate gadgetry nonsense. Gru and Dru grow closer and further apart depending on the needs of a scene, though it makes a prickly brotherly sense. Bratt is a fun new villain, bopping to 80’s tunes and plotting with his chintzy robot sidekick from his lair: a deep-sea tower surrounded by poisonous spikes and guarded by rockets stored in a giant Rubik’s cube. Lucy gets short shrift most of the time, but she has a pleasant motivation to gain her new adopted daughters’ trust. Best, of course, are the Minions, babbling away in their own plotline most of the way through, having resigned to find a more despicable boss. (They remain as preposterously hilarious as ever, waddling and squabbling and getting the brunt of the wackiest violence.) In the end, the variety of subplots converge in a fast-paced action climax where lessons are learned, loyalties confirmed, trust earned, and everything is in its place for a sentimental finale with a door wide open for more. It’s all hectic set-pieces and quick gags, one after the other, lined up for minimum downtime and maximum zany distraction. There’s nothing to it but skillfully empty colorful entertainment. That’s good enough, the series approaching exactly the sort of comforting rhythms and agreeable form of any other reasonably diverting Saturday morning cartoon. Forget the popcorn. I bet it pairs best with a huge bowl of Frosted Flakes.

More (and Less) of the Same: DESPICABLE ME 2

Did you like the 2010 animated slapstick comedy Despicable Me? Well, have I got news for you. Here’s Despicable Me 2, featuring more of everything you liked about Despicable Me except 1.) the sense of surprise, 2.) narrative momentum, and 3.) a non-monetary reason to exist. Oh, sure, Steve Carell’s Gru, the failed supervillain who decided being a dad is even better than being bad, is still a funny voice performance married to distinctive hunched design. His adopted daughters are as precocious and cute as ever. His army of yellow, nugget-shaped, gibberish-babbling Minions represents an often-hysterical expression of pure cartoony id in the best Looney Tunes tradition. But what’s missing most of all in this sequel is a sense of purpose. It’s cute, but the scope of this film feels so small, cramped even. It’s pitched at the level of a not-especially hardworking Saturday-morning cartoon series, smaller stakes, simpler emotions, and a safe, comforting plot that never strays too far from the status quo. As a handful of episodes in this hypothetical TV show, it’d be an amiable time-waster, but as a feature film, this doesn’t quite cut it. Though still amiable, on the big screen its time-waster status looms large.

Since tradition dictates sequels need plots, this one gets one. Gru, having retired from supervillainy at the end of the first film, is asked by the Anti-Villain League to put his skills to use spotting a supervillain in hiding. He turns them down at first. He has a comfortable life throwing his daughter’s birthday party and putting his Minions to work making a line of jams and jellies. But, plot intervenes, and one Silas Ramsbottom (Steve Coogan, in a pinched, nasally voice) pairs Gru with Agent Lucy (Kristen Wiig) to go undercover in a snazzy geodesic-dome-shaped mall and find the person responsible for pilfering an entire Arctic research station in a giant flying electromagnet. (In true cartoon fashion, the ship is in the shape of, what else, a giant horseshoe magnet. I liked that.) So this time around Gru is a good guy who helps the good guys. Gone is the sweet-and-sour core that gave the first film its altogether unexpected, but most welcome, bite. Now it’s just a typical busy kiddie flick that’s broad and appealing without ever much breaking out of the box it has built for itself.

And that’s not a bad thing, necessarily. To sit and watch Despicable Me 2 is not an unpleasant experience. There are bright colors and funny noises and sometimes the 3D bops something towards your face. There’s bouncy cartoon-violence slapstick and plenty of silly moments throughout. Several subplots bounce around within the main throughline: a mysterious something is kidnapping Minions; Gru’s oldest daughter (Miranda Cosgrove) has a crush on a cute boy (Moises Arias) she met at the mall; Gru’s youngest (Elsie Fisher) is struggling with her lines for the Mother’s Day pageant (sadly the middle child (Dana Gaier) is left without a plot of her own); the flighty Lucy just might be a source of Gru love if he ever realizes it. On a simple plot level, a lot is happening here, and it converges into a climax that ties up all the plotlines in a pretty bow. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all mildly entertaining, sometimes kicking up past mild and into very. At one point, the Minions recreate a mid-90’s pop ballad and the scene had me in stitches, though I bet the little kids in the audience might’ve wondered why it was that funny.

Movies like this make me wish we still had a viable market for animated short films. Why force Gru, his girls, and his Minions to fill a feature length runtime with every outing? They’re hugely appealing and animated with bright, round, colorful visuals. Imagine a world in which Universal opts to create dozens of six or seven minute shorts with these characters. Wouldn’t a few minutes of inspired Minion madness be just the thing to show before, say, Furious 6? (Maybe Fox could jump on the bandwagon and put Scrat the prehistoric squirrel before X-Men or something.) Alas, that’s not what we’re considering here. Despicable Me 2 is a safe and competent kids’ movie that’s happy with its smallness and tameness (not to mention sameness). It’s a quintessential “good enough” sequel, satisfied to simply say, you liked this last time so here’s some more. It’s coasting on audience goodwill.