In a way, Despicable Me 3 represents everything wrong with film today. The 2010 original was brilliant, complete cinematic experience within itself. However, being a successful, family-friendly, animated movie, there sprung the inevitable clamor for more. Three films later (including the spinoff Minions), the story seems fabricated – even by animated standards—the characters don’t grow or age, and the jokes simply aren’t as funny. But show me an AMC without Despicable Me 3 and I’ll show you a theater out of business.
It is now seven years later and I want to love the continuing adventures of Gru and the Minions, but I don’t. I want to chuckle and guffaw and “awwwww” and instead I smile politely realizing that were this new to me, I might like it more, but I can’t help feeling this franchise should have left well enough alone.
Married secret agent crime fighters Gru (voice of Steve Carell) and Lucy (Kristen Wiig) are tossed out of work after a semi-botched attempt to capture Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker). The aptly named Bratt is perhaps the most innovative new animation of 2017 – he is a former 80s child-tv star gone rogue (which is a somewhat hilarious nod to middle-aged folks with memories of people like Adam Rich, Dana Plato, and Corey Feldman). The catch is that Bratt never outgrew the 80s for fashion, style, or his bad boy tv personality, so the high-topped, mulleted, bubble-yum smacking, shoulder-pad wearing Bratt shows up to crimes in a purple jumpsuit toting his own boombox soundtrack.
You can’t possibly hate a film showing two grown men “dance fighting” to a backdrop of “Sussudio,” can you?
Along for the ride here, a lesser and cheaper innovation is the sudden revelation of Gru having a twin brother, Dru. As Gru and Lucy are suddenly out-of-work, this cheap plot twist becomes because the main tack, with everybody we know from the previous films visiting Dru’s island hideaway. Everybody, that is except for the Minions; the Minions are pissed that Gru’s unemployment has not naturally turned him back to a life of crime. Spitefully departing the new Gru revue, the pack of yellow gel caps
deliver the highlights of Despicable Me 3, first with an accidental stage performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General,” and then living prison life in the fallout.
Bottom line is I’m conflicted here. Despicable Me 3 is clearly not a tour-de-force, but it is watchable. This is the result of what happens when you’re not done cashing in, but have run out of great ideas. On that score, I have good reason to loathe this film on its face. But I don’t. It’s hard to loathe the Minions. It’s also still hard to loathe Gru’s girls: Agnes, Edith, and Margo. There is an awesome “so fluffy I think I’m gonna die” throwback moment to the first film, and that’s exactly where we are – a dull reflection of the Despicable Me. For you fans of (the original, pre-Dana) Plato, this is the Allegory of the Cave – Despicable Me is the perfect icon and Despicable Me 3 is the shadow on the wall that we see. We know it’s imperfect; we know it’s -at best- an approximation of a much better film, but Minion shadows are still funny.
♪I am the very model of a modern major meh sequel
I’ve collected a scene or two obscenely nonsensical
Sometimes the writing resembles approximate substance fecal
But have no fear, you’ll laugh and cheer once you have dropped your standards, pal
Remember Gru? He turned to true enduring tiny fiasco
His three girls haven’t grown a single day in seven years or so
Check it out, a brother on an island elsewhere here we go
This is called a sucker plot fully phoned in, doncha know?
All:
This is called a sucker plot fully phoned in, doncha know?
This is called a sucker plot fully phoned in, doncha know?
This is called a sucker plot fully phoned in, doncha know?♫
Rated PG, 90 Minutes
D: Kyle Balda, Pierre Coffin, Eric Guillon
W: Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio
Genre: “Icable” [/Daffy Duck]
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Parents needing to entertain small children
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Canon fodder
♪ Parody inspired by “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General”
