Cartoon Corner- Despicable Me

Consciously or unconsciously, Illumination drew a lot of inspiration from Shrek here.  Take an obvious villain, put a known comedian behind them, make the whole thing a surface-level subversion of the expectations for children’s movies while deep down reaffirming most of the same basic tropes.  They both even end on essentially a fourth wall shattering cast-wide dance party.  While Shrek is a different animal at heart (for starters it’s a full on parody), those similarities definitely color how I’m looking at the movie as a whole.



One of the defining features of Shrek to me is that the side cast always got a lot more attention than Shrek and Fiona, and without having seen those films in many years… well yeah.  Shrek and Fiona aren’t really interesting.  Despicable Me similarly puts a disproportionate focus on characters who aren’t Gru and the Girls.

Unlike Shrek this weakens the movie to me.  I mean, the Minions are kinda adorably stupid, and in 2010 before they went through a complete arc of overexposure they were probably hilarious because they still whisper just a little to my inner  12 year old now, despite being thoroughly familiar with their antics.  But I gotta say, Steve Carell nails the careful balance he has to for this.  His sarcasm is impossibly dry, and his ability to deadpan basically anything unless he’s specifically putting on a show is on full display here.  And because of that, when we slowly see him smiling in spite of himself, or the very last thread of his patience finally snapping before he vaporizes the carnival game for cheating, it still feels fully part of the character.  They do a credible-enough job with the girls too, they feel pretty distinct despite not having too many lines.

There’s all sorts of subtext (also text) about the relationships between parents and children going on here, but for whatever reason a lot of that never speaks to me.  Vector’s position in the plot in particular is more interesting for the obvious nepotism than for the dripping disappointment the banker has in him.  Although honestly I’m not entirely sure what they’re going for there, the main nods to have to pop cultural references are with the bank and it just seems fairly empty, in the “it’s funny because I know that name” sense.  On the other hand this is where they put in the scenes of baby Gru wanting to go to the moon, and that’s awesome.

The way they do teeth is weird.  The other physical comedy bits are pretty good, them using a shrink ray as the main plot device opens up for that.  Nothing especially jumped at me animation wise, but it’s… y’know, fine.

Rating- 6/10.  Definitely could have been a better movie overall, but entertaining enough for what it was.