Despicable: Dangerous for children & others

Rating: 1/10 (17 July 2010)

All the trite and worn clichés of pseudo-child comedies were well noted by top professional film reviewers like, A. O. Scott (NYT). While full of hi-tech 3-D whiz and an ensemble of hyperbole to promote a mass-market money maker, this film has grave dangers for both children and adult former victims of child abuse.
A bright 3 year old girl continually asked her mum and aunt "is this supposed to be funny". The aunt who had been a child victim of male sexual abuse was thoroughly traumatized by the main character's domination and exploitative treatment of the girls, which expressed a subtext playing on well-known characteristics of child abuse and abuser syndromes.
in both speech and attitude as well as animated representation, the little female characters displayed many behavioral modalities of submission and coquettishness characteristic of the fear and seduction of sexually abused girls. Such characteristics may be commonly embedded during the child's experience with a male abuser, most often a family member, yet held onto during adulthood. Combined with fears generated by the abuser, and feelings of guilt, these traits are deeply embedded and difficult to release even through therapy, hindering may women from experiencing safety and fulfillment in adult relationships.
Have these presentations of stereotypical characteristics commonly related to child sexual abuse and abusers been overlooked, or merely submerged as titillation to mass audiences experiencing emotional responses they cannot dare to express?
Shown before an audience of psychiatric and social work professionals in the fields of child sexual abuse, and mature abuse victims, this film would most probably be labeled as inappropriate for general audiences with warnings attached as to the covert messages embedded within layers of trivial high tech stimulation. Should such verbal innuendo, body language, proxemics and social interactions as portrayed in this film be observed in Roman Catholic priests, they would soon be investigated and perhaps prosecuted.