Despicable Me 3 Review

Another weekend brings another kid's animated film, well, actually, last weekend, but hey, can't I have a life away from my keyboard? This time Steve Carell plays Gru, a bad-guy turned good-guy after three kids, a wife, and two predecessors. Overall? It is mindless children candy, with pop-songs and dance numbers, fart humor (on the production company Illumination's title screen even!), but nothing here is as deadened or as gross as the recent "Captain Underpants."

He finds out he has a long-lost twin brother, Dru (also Steve Carell), gets fired from his job at the "Anti-Villain League," while being targeted by Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker), the supervillain here who is persistently stuck in the eighties (he was, of course, a child-actor in a TV show during that decade, but the film never materializes much from this). That is the plot's skeleton, but there are pounds and pounds of excess plot, particularly forgettable is the subplot about Gru's wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig) trying to be a "mom" to the three little girls; fans of the franchise know that Gru adopted them, so Lucy isn't their real mom (unless she is, and I just guessed the plot of the fourth film). Dru persuades Gru to become a villain again, one of the kids searches for a unicorn, the minions (the franchise's obnoxious mascots) quit and end up in jail- there is simply too much plot! And too much of it has been done before and with more wit (such as the slammer-sing-along ripped straight from "Austin Powers in Goldmember"), but I don't know... the kids laughed at least.

Bratt's 80's attitude is superficially charming,  dancing (or should I say "moon-dancing"?) to Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Madonna (whoa, what a decade) and plenty others. His shoulder pads got a grin from me in the commercials I saw on TV weeks before seeing it, but there is zero depth beneath the retro haircut; his personality is defined only by the songs on his playlist. Parents may chuckle when he does he plays the keytar for the first time, but by the end of the movie adults will be wishing for somebody to hit the "mute" button. The rest of the cast speak with the passion as someone cashing a quick check (ironic), but the animation is fast paced, not exactly occurring at breakneck speed, but quick enough to keep a grumpy critic from falling asleep.

A week after release, a quick internet search shows this movie has grossed about half a billion dollars. That is a lot of money, and if you are a parent whose kids desperately want to see this movie, don't worry. It isn't terrible. It is far from good (let alone coherent), but for a non-Disney movie, you won't be needing to sneak in that flask to get through this ninety minute long film. Just do not bring in any candy- this film is so sentimental, so sappy and saccharine about family and all that stuff that if films had calories, this movie could cause diabetes.