Cartoon Corner- Despicable Me 2

Unlike a lot of sequels I can think of, this really feels like a sequel: it’s entirely about the fallout from events in the previous movie and how this impacts the lives of the characters.



Yeah sure there’s a new supervillain and complications from outside the original details of the world as presented but you could remove a lot of them from the movie without substantially hurting the final product.  Well, maybe not remove, but certainly El Macho didn’t really need to have an evil plot going on.  He could just have been a retired supervillain who reminisces about the old days and laments Gru giving up the life too (and also his son is playing with one of the girls’ hearts).

But mostly it’s about looking at the end of the first movie and saying “okay so he’s a father now, but what does that mean”.  Gru seems to soldier on without much looking back, but hey he lived out his life dream already so moving on to a new phase of his life might just feel natural.  But it also means his friends feel like he’s left them behind, and the neighbors he used to ignore have to be allowed in a little bit, and having to figure out how to support a family and so forth.

There’s definitely a streak of feeling outdated and the weight of age catching up with you.  Come to think of it they definitely touched on it in the first movie, and actually I’m wondering if it’s going to crop up again in the upcoming third movie considering they went out of their way to fill the previews with the villain who’s whole gimmick is lame 80s throwbacks.  Which is really the main function of El Macho in the plot; he went into the woodwork after his most iconic moment, but the family life leaves something missing so he tries to go back into full on villainy.

Otherwise all the best parts of the first movie are back for this one.  Gru’s protectiveness walks the right line to stay funny, the Minions are used mostly-appropriately, there’s a sort of understated gag where the real jokes is how ineffectual everything is.  Mostly they replaced what often felt like filler originally, the never-quite-lands attempts at being subversive, with more nuance and interesting stuff.

Rating- 7/10.  Not amazingly better than the first, but I’d definitely put it higher.