Review of Despicable Me (2010) by Official C — 21 Nov 2014

Animated comedy that has had a wildly enthusiastic response in the US. This baffles me a little. It is a perfectly agreeable family entertainment, but not exactly original and nowhere near Pixar's great creations.

Despicable Me is co-directed by Chris Renaud - who created the bug-eyed squirrel Scrat in the Ice Age movies - and the French-born animator Pierre Coffin. Steve Carell voices the character of Gru, a career super-villain who presides over a secret lair populated by hundreds of little yellow creatures who do his bidding.

Times are hard in the super-villain world, and Gru finds it tough to get funding from the banks (there's a nice wisecrack about Lehman Brothers) for his various megalomaniac wheezes. And there's a thrusting new super-villain in town called Vector, voiced by Jason Segel, who is flavour of the month with the venture-capital community.

Gru hits on the plan of adopting three orphans who will insinuate themselves into Vector's house by selling him girl-scout cookies and pinch his new gadget. But then, inevitably, he finds himself becoming entranced by his little kids, and wonders whether fatherhood is more his style after all.

Decent stuff, but Gru is nowhere near as interesting as, say, Syndrome from The Incredible.