Animated family fare occupies a small fraction of the overall movie market. So, when good ones come along, they tend to do big business. Despicable Me got everything right, and walked away with over $500 million worldwide. Necessarily, we have Despicable Me 2. Thank goodness Steve Carell never seems to sleep. (He’s also appearing in The Way, Way Back, also out in theaters now.)
One of the most important elements of the first film was it’s charismatic villain with the ambiguous accent, Gru, played by Carell. After his 11th hour change of heart in the first film, he’s naturally our hero for the sequel, with adopted family in tow. And of course, the insanely popular minions are back as well.
The story is simple, a new villain is on the loose, and given his past job related experience, the Anti Villain League needs Gru’s help in foiling whatever dastardly plot is being cooked up. Adventure ensues.
DM2 is chock full of bright colors, massive attention to detail (e.g. the Gru ‘G’ adorns everything), and wisely segments character styles into French / Edward Gorey exaggerated adults, wide-eyed overly simplistic minions, and the happy medium, if large headed children. It’s risky making characters look odd, and can doom a project, but there’s magic here, and the pointy nosed, bald headed, top heavy Gru seems a natural protagonist.
The film attempts to fill it’s time with as much humor as possible, and works best there. The spy adventure is not hugely engaging, and though Benjamin Bratt deserves props for his voice-work, the villain comes off as more annoying then threatening. The mystery serves mostly to move the story to the next round of jokes, sight gags, minion lunacy, embarrassing situations, touching family moments, or musical number. There’s a music video in the finale which seems oddly, coincidentally similar to the ending of another film out in theaters right now. That scene, like some other jokes in the film, registers only with adults in the audience. It should be noted that poop and fart jokes, wig jokes, a man spraying a woman with a hose, and a floozy character are elements which might challenge some movie goers. Even so, there’s an endless stream of comedy, and while some of it doesn’t work, a majority does. Interestingly, the “fart gun” never seemed to entertain the children in the audience of the screening I attended. The “he’s pooping” line, however, brought the house down.
Despicable Me 2 might not be Brad Bird level animated entertainment, but it’s a harmless and amusing distraction for adults, and should easily entertain those diminutive members of the public mostly likely to insist you take them to see it. You might also enjoy the http://despicableme.com/ website, which has a number of cute videos. Check out the Happy Video, and the movie clips. Or, watch the Minion Roll Call, here: