Despicable Me

Rating: 7/10 (18 October 2010)

The 3D concept was still making big business at the box office, and Pixar had the stronghold on the computer animated movie market, so Universal hyped up this movie for a while. Basically the real Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt has been stolen, and there is news coverage to find the great master criminal who did it. In a regular suburban neighbourhood of white picket fences and roses is a single black house surrounded by dead grass, it belongs to wannabe master criminal Gru (Steve Carell). Hidden beneath the house is the large secret hideout where Gru, with his hundreds of short yellow pill-shaped characters known as the Minions, plans his next big scheme. To become the greatest master criminal of all, Gru has a master plan to puzzle the whole world, he plans to steal a shrinking ray, shrink the moon, and steal it from the sky. He does try to steal the shrinking ray, but the criminal responsible for stealing the famous pyramid, Victor, aka Vector (Knocked Up's Jason Segel) takes it from him. With the high security stopping Gru taking the shrinking ray back, he has an idea to get in, by adopting three orphan children, Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Elsie Fisher). He spots them selling their sweets, biscuits and cakes to Vector without any problems, and he wants to use this to his advantage to get into the Vector compound. It takes Gru a while to get anything done to get the plan on the road, as the three orphans are very needy and annoying, this is frustrating both him and his sidekick Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand). As time goes by and he does spend more time with the children, Gru finds himself becoming very fond of them and almost forgetting the plan completely. Gru does manage to get the children into Vector's house, and with the help of some cookie robots and some of the Minions, he does get the shrinking ray, but he doesn't convince the bank of evil manager about his plan. Gru gets the funding instead from all the Minions, and it finally comes to the night where the moon is in the best position to shrink and steal it. However, it is on the same night as the three girls dance recital, and after the moon plan does succeed and the tides go out of control Gru finds out that Vector has taken the children. In the end, Vector is defeated when the moon grows back to its normal size and he stuck on it back in space, and Gru has completely changed his opinion of the children, becoming surprisingly nice. Also starring Dame Julie Andrews as Gru's Mom, Will Arnett as Mr. Perkins, Danny McBride as Fred McDade; Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud, Jemaine Clement as the Minions and The Hangover's Ken Jeong as Talk Show Host. Carell with his mixed accent makes Gru a great anti-villain that you can both like and dislike, and the Tic Tac looking Minions all bring out their lovable individual personalities very well. It is a simple story using a James Bond style villain and slowly turning him against type, the animation is as good as a Pixar picture, the gadgetry is both cool and funny, and the visual jokes make for fun viewing, so it is a good family comedy. It was nominated the BAFTA for Best Animated Feature Film, and it was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Animated Film. Very good!