Review of Despicable Me 3 (2017) by Trevorsview — 29 Jun 2017

People always complain about how mean humanity can get; we all know of the pain whenever a terrorist strikes an airport or a movie theater or an elementary school on a regular day. So why let a cast of yellow criminals define our whole pop culture? The people behind Despicable Me 3 are not even secretive about their agenda: one of their recent tweets read, “It feels so good to be bad. #DespicableMe3 #Minions” - @DM_Minions.

The countless obnoxious jokes in this feature well surpass PG-rated acceptability, as the writers continue to victimize women and give men a bad name. The opening logos alone feature two consecutive fart gags. Then Gru, Lucy, and his minions set off to fight their foe on a US Marine ship, only to end with the fat fleshy penguin passing by an office birthday party window in his *ahem* birthday suit. Meanwhile, the Minions land in the middle of a beach where an attractive bikini girl bends down as we look up at her, pressed cleavage framed accordingly. Of course, it sets the Minions into a wild beach party… for some reason.

These giggly yellow tic-tacs never grasped my interest, in fact it wasn’t until last month when I watched the Despicable Me movies for the first time. Well, guess what? Now I have a good reason to hate these golden parasites: these disgusting role models make breaking the law look lovable. While co-director Pierre Coffin still puts in the appropriate contagious voice for these deformed egg yolks, the strength of his performance brings no humor into the poorly staged gags. For instance, after Gru loses his job, these one-eyed laxative pills quit. It leads the live pancreases into a long, pointless subplot that stretches from American Idol rip-off (named “Sing” of course), to a hip little prison. After two movies and one spinoff, I refuse to believe that none of these oddly shaped humans think twice about these lemon jelly beans wandering about. In truth, these ugly bananas could have been funnier if they had actual human emotions instead of just meeting the comedy’s demands.

Nobody else here, especially the female characters, contributes any value either. The oldest of the three girls, Margo, does continue her boy issues, but her forced attempt to court a Mexican boy just segues into a usual lazy stereotype. The youngest of the girls, Agnes, continues to bring out the franchise’s soul with her adorable search for a unicorn, which in the end does nothing except give the most forced moral that ever forced around the morals. Gru’s wife, Lucy, learns the ways of a good disciplined mother, which like Margo’s subplot, just turns into hateful stereotyping towards an aggressive Mexican woman with facial hair. So no good family morals here!

Although, the parents may smile a bit from the nostalgic 1980’s callbacks: expanding bubblegum, musical hits on a cassette tape, Michael Jackson, Jazzercising, toy robots, Rubik’s cubes, a bloated Donald Trump doppelganger, and those flashy MTV colors! It certainly resembles what you remembered from your childhood, but here is the catch: it all comes from the antagonist.

Yeah, sorry: the nostalgia only exists to subliminally teach kids to see you as destroying their Generation Y imaginations. The whole climax represents that concept as the bad guy’s giant robot toy terrorizes Hollywood’s major landmarks. It ends with a dance battle between the embodiment of the parents’ childhood and Gru, the embodiment of the present-day childhood. Clearly, the blame on the movies’ destruction lands on the parents’ nostalgia, and Generation Y must rebel against it!

Between all the colorless merchandising that we can never escape from as stemmed by this franchise, it’s important to know exactly why we refuse to escape. From my experience, the Minions embody our current outlook on violence:

-The yellow color represents positive feelings, the round pill shape suggests balance.

-The blue overalls represents working without too much responsibility.

-The gibberish language mixed with other world languages represents the Americanized melting pot.

-The alternating between having one or two eyes represents how some people are one sided and others can look at both sides.

-Their nearly identical appearances represents how we each represent them in some way or another.

So in conclusion: Despicable Me 3 and its predecessors teach us all, kids and adults, that America sets worldwide humanity in balance through crime. I say different. Today’s kids must learn not to feed their greed, and Illumination Entertainment is not helping.