All Reviews

Despicable Me
---
Before I review this movie, I want to give background on why I would want to rewatch this movie. I was six years old when Despicable Me came out. When the second movie came out, the song Happy by Pharrell Williams was the theme song of my school's standardized testing week, year after year. So this movie franchise has kind of grown up with me. But I only watched the first two, and I don't really remember either of them so I decided to give them another look.

Based on what I know about the movies, I am hoping to watch a film about an adoptive father figuring out how to care for his daughters, meanwhile he steals the moon or something. I recently listened to the song from the fourth movie and besides it being very good, it is hinting toward an arc about Gru needing to give up his evil ways for his family's benefit.

With all of this in mind, I just wanted to give the movie another chance to enter my brain. I hope the fact that I am not a minion-obsessed five year old won't hinder my enjoyment of it.

---
I really enjoyed watching this movie. At first I was kind of on the fence about watching the sequels (on the one hand, the song from the fourth movie kind of convinced me to rewatch the movie, but on the other hand if it was really hard to watch, I was okay stopping after this one). But I will probably continue watching.

Overall, this movie touched on topics such as getting older in a society that focuses to younger people and the pressure from yourself and others to live your life a certain way. The movie showcased the former using comparative imagry - one example being the difference in the two main villians' ships. Gru's ship looks old and rugged, which is contrasted by younger villian Vector's ship which looks sleek and modern.


Spoiler Alert!


This movie's start seems to follow an idea that was later echoed by The Good Place's director Michael Schur -- No torture is too small. Gru's actions throughout the beginning of the film all lean evil, even if that is not the main point of the action originally. For example, it wasn't too important what he pretended his job was at the adoption agency. He chose to go dressed as a dentist, something that notoriously scares children. This version of Gru doesn't last too long unfortunately. I was disappointed in his initial appearance with the girls and how quickly his scary front went away.

One scene that I want to point out specifically is the iron maiden scene. In this seen, one of the children, Edith, steps inside of an iron maiden and presumably blood trickles out of the bottom. Seconds later, it is revealed that the iron maiden actually just stabbed her juice box, but this scene is so cool. They unfortunately would probably not be able to show something like that in current movies.

The animation style is good for its time. I appreciated the attention to detail. For example, when Gru is reading the children a bedtime story, the book has distinct pages that are accurate to his page turns. The music in this movie was fairly done. The score itself wasn't amazing or anything, but the music knew when to get dramatic and when to calm down.

One thing I really pay attention to in movies is how much they hold the audience's hand. One scene that demonstrates this principle for this movie is the scene where Vector goes to the dance recital to kidnap the three girls. The movie chose not to show that scene in its entirety, simply alluding to what will happen. This, in my opinion, delivers a stronger payoff when Gru finds the ransom note.

Let's talk minions. The minions were obviously placed in the movie to cater to a younger audience, but that doesn't make them uninteresting. One thing that I noticed is how far the minions are willing to go for Gru. It is implied through the movie that the minions all have their own non-work lifes and are here by choice. They constantly act as the testing dummies for Gru's weapons, and all fling themselves off of buildings and planes to catch him when he falls. I think it's safe to say that Gru's minions are willing to die for him. At the end of the movie, one minion is trapped on the moon with Vector. My prediction is, I want that minion to become evil - or, since he is already evil working for Gru, just generally on the antagonist's team. I think that would be very interesting.

I'll end my review with one more short critique. I wish that at the end of the film, the girls (or at least just Margo) were afraid of heights. Their big trust-redeeming moment with Gru had them danggling off of a plane. I think it would have been a nice detail to show that that moment really affected them.



Thank you for reading! This is the first time ever I have written out a review like this. Hopefully I will get better at formatting and such. Let me know what you think of this series of movies, and tell me what I should watch next.

Despicable Me 2

Sequels are usually disappointing compared to the first movie. To be honest, I would have really enjoyed a movie that was solely Gru being an evil villain while also learning how to be a father. Did I miss the part where he stopped being a villain? They just kind of sprang it on me. Anyway. That wasn't what this movie was about, but it could have been. Overall, I did enjoy watching this movie, even with a dose of second-hand embarrassment that was not present in the first one. I wrote fewer notes this time which means A) I spent more time actually watching the movie, meaning I was enthralled in the plot, but also B) I didn't think there were a lot of things that were noteworthy. But let's get into it.

Spoiler Alert!

There was a lot going on in this movie. First of all, I was correct in my prediction in the last review. Yay evil minions! It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, and this plot point barely mattered in the runtime of the movie, but I'm going to count that as a win. For this review, I'm going to divide my thoughts into things that worked for me, and things that didn't work for me.

What worked:
My favorite thing was the forshadowing with the color purple. Very early in the movie, Gru gets purple icing all over himself. The evil minions are purple, and later Gru gets regular minions to pretend to be evil by smearing purple stuff on them. This same thing happening to Gru in the beginning symbolically asks the question of whether Gru is still evil.
At the very beginning of the movie, Agnes (his youngest daughter) has a birthday party. For just a moment in this scene, we see a dragon-themed obstacle course that features dangerous instruments including an electric element. I like this detail because it shows that Gru still does not really understand what is and isn't age appropriate. He's still new at this.
Similarly, there was a short moment between Gru and Agnes where she is practicing for a Mother's Day event at school. She needs to recite a poem about having a loving mother - which she obviously doesn't have. This scene is genuinely a little bit sad. When Agnes expresses that it's hard for her to perform the poem with emotion because of her lack of a mother, Gru suggests - perhaps jokingly - that she should just pretend to have one in that moment. To this, Agnes claims that she does that "all the time." I really appreciated that the movie took a little bit of time to allow her to express these feelings, though I really wish that this aspect of the story could have had more screentime. I really think that would allow the movie as a whole to have a bigger impact. Which brings me to the next part of my review.

What didn't work:
The overall premise of this movie is that Gru needs to get together with someone. As you will find out when I review more movies, I really dislike when a romantic interest is forced onto a main character. If Gru picking up dating was framed as him doing so because he wanted to, and that was tied into the idea of giving his children a mother, I think that would have worked. But instead, Gru is pressured into the dating world by his neighbor and also, separately, his daughter just so happens to be yearning for a mother. The two ideas to not meet in the way I would have liked them too. They are almost isolated from each other in the context of the movie. I think Gru's return to the villain scene had more to do with his kids than dating did. And maybe as an audience member, I was supposed to see that emotional scene with Gru and Agnes and realize that that was when Gru's motivation changed, but I don't think that's what the movie makers had in mind. I did appreciate, however, that they let three years go by before getting married. (I assume 147 dates corresponds with approximately three years. Like, one date per week?)

One final note, I mentioned last time that Pharrell Williams's song, Happy, was played a lot at my school during the state testing period. So hearing it in the movie was kind of weird. But I bring this up because during this song is a montage of Gru walking around the neighborhood being happy. Later in the movie, Gru walks through the same areas except sadly this time. The color grading difference between these two scenes was really good! I'm not the best about talking about color grading yet, but in short, the second scene looks more gray and cloudy than the first one.

That is my review of Despicable Me 2. I'm not super duper excited to watch the third one, because I think it introduces Gru's cousin or brother or something and I remember hearing that he was annoying from my friends who caught the flick in theaters. But that was 13 years ago, and the opinion of children.

See you next time!

Despicable Me 3

Despicable Me 3

It has finally set in that this is a series for children. In the third installment, the genre has shifted to almost exclusively children's comedy - not the family drama spy comedy genre the movies before this one settled into. Watching this one, there were fewer elements that were for me. They were still there, so I am going to share those now. I also have to acknowlege this: I am getting psychic damage from how much Steve Carell sounded like characters from Veggietales in this. Dru sounded just like Archibald Asparagus. Gru at times thoughout the series sounds like Pa Grape. iykyk

Spoiler Alert!

This movie had a pretty simple A-plot and B-plot, with a tiny C-plot toward the middle-end. The main conflict was with a villain named Evil Bratt, who was a TV star in his childhood and turned evil in response to his show getting cancelled. Early scenes which Bratt felt like Dr. Robotnik in the Sonic movies, which I enjoyed. But his motivation just leads him to direct his attack on Hollywood in general, which I think was short-sighted. I think using this as a moment to actually critique Hollywood would have been interesting, though doing so in a Hollywood movie would probably have been looked down on. Speaking of this movie being more focused on the children in the audience, Gru's character as a whole seems to have been simplified and made goofier. I didn't like this change, though I will admit that him acting that way in response to meeting his long-lost brother does make sense.

The secondary conflict in this movie was with Lucy and the girls. She is struggling to make a connection with them due to her own inexperience with parenting. I think this conflict makes a lot of sense, as it mirror's Gru's in the first movie. But speaking of Gru, I do wish that the movie showed that he had improved as a parent, though with the unicorn plot line that doesn't seem to be the case. Back to Lucy, her conflict gets solved very quickly. The entire movie, the girls are walking all over her and do not appreciate her. But then it all gets solved in a single scene that only Margo was there for.

Now for some miscellaneous things I noticed.

I'm trying to figure out the language that the minions speak. In this movie, we see Gru use a translation book to speak with them, though in earlier movies he can clearly understand the language. (As someone who is learning a second language, this timeline makes a lot of sense. Reading and listening are more easily done than writing or speaking.) In a scene where the minions are hungry and a pizza delivery driver drives by, one of the minions says something that sounds like "para comer" which is, of course, Spanish for "to eat." I thought this detail was incredibly interesting because not only does that serve as a starting point for how the minions' language is derived, but also in the first movie Gru reveals that he speaks at least a bit of Spanish so that would double the idea that Gru can understand the minions.

I liked the scenes with the minions breaking out of prison because it showcased their craftsman skills. However, in the shower scene, a bubble collection reminds Mel of Gru, but I had to rewatch and really look at the bubbles. It did not look like Gru to me.

Toward the beginning of the film, we get a scene that is the first (and kind of only) scene with just Lucy and Gru interacting without some sort of outside force weighing in. In this scene, Gru is upset about losing his job. Lucy is supportive, but ultimately dismissive of his feelings, stating that he needs to look forward. I was later disproved, but at first I thought that this would be the set up for Gru's return to evil.

The next movie is the final one! And it is the reason I started watching these in the first place. All because of that song from Pharrell Williams that I thought might have larger lore implications. Now seeing Dru kind of join the family while maintaining being evil, I am really hoping that the fourth movie isn't Dru getting mistaken for Gru on his evil escapades and Gru having to clear his name. That would be such a let down. But I suppose I will just have to wait and see.



Woo! I am almost done with this stupid franchise.