Great voice showcase for Carell's comedic improv

Rating: 7/10 (16 April 2011)

Despicable Me, from its initial previews, looked kind of, well, lame. Like it wasn't sure what it wanted to be. Was it about good versus evil? The little tots who wind up in almost every scene were barely seen in the initial trailers. So I had sort of dismissed the movie. But that was a wrong decision, as the movie has a lot of heart, terrific voice performances, and a simple, plausible plot that can please both youngsters and cranky old people. And the rest of you.
Groo (Steve Carell) is the world's number-one supervillain. He lives in a lair that's beset on all sides by suburbia, and deep within that lair are house his thousands of minions, tiny little alien-looking creatures who serve to live and live to serve. (They sort of remind me of the alien toys from Toy Story.)
Groo is a mastermind who has big, big plans – he wants to go to the moon, shrink it, bring it back to earth, and ransom it for untold riches. To do this, he needs a loan from an evil banker (Will Arnett), who won't even talk to him until Groo can produce the needed shrink ray. Meanwhile, Groo isn't the only evil bastard out there, as a new kid on the block named Vector (Jason Segal) is already outdoing him in sheer villainy, having swiped the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Vector has the shrink ray, and Groo has a problem. He hits upon a most cynical solution – he'll use orphans! He adopts a trio of little girls (led by Miranda Cosgrove) who have been tasked with selling cookies door to door, and it turns out Vector's ordered a huge batch. Groo sees this as a way into Vector's own lair, thus allowing him to grab the gun and get the loan and shrink the moon and get all the riches in the world! But he doesn't quite count on the girls' charms. It's said that Groo's heart grew (ha, unintended pun) three sizes that day.
Carell gives Groo a Slavic/Russian accent that's reminiscent of, among others, Bela Lugosi and Blofeld. The voice and the character are a perfect match, and Carell is terrific as he always seems to be in his voice work. Groo looks like The Penguin, come to think of it, adding another layer of villainy.
Anyway, one thing that makes this work is that the shift from Groo as terrifying bad guy to cuddly father figure is slight, slow, and completely believable. Imagine if you hated kids, or at least had no real use for them. Then you do find a use and figure you can discard them later on, only you find it ain't that easy. Never is with kids, is it? The movie could have taken the easier way of having Groo recruit the kidlets to help him in his nefarious scenes, but instead they have him blindly pretend nothing is amiss, that the minions are his cousins, and so on. Subtlety is key.
The animation is pretty good, about what you'd expect. It was probably a real hoot to see in 3D, but alas I saw it on my home screen, which is still in 2D and will remain so until the industry has its act together. But even in 2D, it's an exciting, entertaining movie, and it has some 3D-oriented surprises during the end credits.