I Am to Be Reviewing You Now, Yes? (Despicable Me Review)

One very specific aspect of Despicable Me worried me more and more as we inched closer to its release: the ad campaign.  I don't mind an excess of trailers shotgun-blasted onto TV stations - in fact, I tend to expect it - but this was something different.  Perhaps it was simply the shows I watched, but in the last few episodes of this season's "The Biggest Loser", Jillian Michaels (the show's hard-ass female trainer) shot brief segments in which she talked with Despicable Me's little yellow minions about dieting and exercising while they tripped on treadmills and ate basketballs.  What really worried me, though, was Best Buy's little contribution: giving its customers a phone app that would allow them to translate what the little yellow buggers were saying during the film's end credits.  First of all, the segment was funny enough just watching their actions and body language, and second, thank you Best Buy for encouraging people to bring their cell phones to the movies.  I really appreciate it.  The reason this excessive ad campaign worried me so was that I've seen it happen all too often that the more a movie is advertised, the worse it ends up being.  In other words, the more money that is spent getting the film's name out there, the less there is to go towards the name itself.  From a mathematical perspective, I like to think this makes a lot of sense.

Well, I'm pleased to say that the studios (Illumination Entertainment; distributed by Universal Pictures) made the most out of their $69 million-dollar budget - though, to be fair, I don't honestly know if that includes advertising.  Alamo Drafhouse's pre-game show was full of clips from heist movies (including the excellent Wallace and Grommit episode called "The Wrong Trousers") as well as some behind-the-scenes looks at the different actors doing their voicework.  I didn't realize what a cast this movie has: Steve Carell (of course), Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Will Arnett, Kristin Wiig (the busy lady who has starred in both MacGruber and How to Train Your Dragon this year), Miranda Cosgrove (known either as know-it-all Summer from School of Rock or Carly from "iCarly", depending on your age), Jemaine from the band/TV show "Flight of the Conchords", and, the big surprise, Julie Andrews.  Watching the movie, you'd never know it was half of these people (particularly Russel Brand), but that just goes to show what kind of talent went into the film.

Despicable Me is a cute, if insanely predictable, film about an evil villain named Gru who decides that his next and greatest heist will be to steal the moon.  Gru wears a lot of black and speaks with an Old Country accent, like he's from some Eastern European country that came into existence after the dismantling of the USSR.  In order to fund his heist, he has to take out a loan from the Bank of Evil (with a sign that says "Formerly Lehman Brothers"), but to do so he has to prove that he'll pull off the heist, even though his shrink ray gun has just been stolen by newcomer Vector (Jason Segel).  Gru adopts a trio of girls selling cookies as a way of sneaking into Vector's stronghold to get his gun back.  Over the course of the movie, he learns to care for the girls and slowly turns from bad to good.  Again, it's fairly predictable in terms of turning Gru from an evil mastermind into a sort of Slovakian hero, but the twists and turns (and jokes) within the all-too-familiar mold are what make the movie.

Gru's bizarre little yellow minions are an absolute riot.  They speak as though someone is listening to a cassette tape in fast forward, but every once in a while you can catch a word or two, like when one is sitting bare-assed on the copier and his buddy says "butt" and then giggles hysterically for the rest of the scene.  They reminded me of the insane little rabbids from the recent Rayman: Raving Rabbids videogames, only with a lot more yellow.

Overall, though, I always felt like something was just slightly missing.  Even now I cannot quite pinpoint it.  Despicable Me was fun, and funny, and I'd happily sit through it again.  It contained some of the most clever voice-acting I've ever heard, even from the youngest girl (whom you may have heard yell "IT'S SO FLUFFY!!" in the previews).  The evil inventions, the badguys' lairs, the opening scene, the plot twist towards the end, everything was rock solid and so well done.  And yet... I don't know.  In thinking about it now, it may have been that I didn't feel like I really connected to Gru or the girls.  Not the movie's fault, I guess, but then again, I shouldn't have felt such a connection with a pull-string cowboy doll or a neurotic clownfish, either, but Pixar pulled it off.  Despicable Me is definitely worth seeing, but it's not the best animated film I've seen this year.  Heck, it's not even the best I've seen this month.

And 3D is still worthless.  Just a new way for the studios to charge half of the ticket over again.