Review of Despicable Me 3 (2017) by John M — 17 Jan 2018

Those chicken nuggets are back. So this is about... well, a lot of different things, but per IMDb, the main plot is Gru being reunited with his long lost twin brother Dru (both voiced by Steve Carell).

As you may remember, Gru has gone clean and gotten out of crime, but his brother wants to pull him back in for one last heist. Now I will say that I genuinely like the first Despicable Me. It was an out of nowhere surprise from an animation studio that had yet to make its mark, and it was just feel-good family fun.

Every returning installment/spin-off has not been as inspired, and it hasn't even been close. I wouldn't even go so far as to call it lazy, it's more like they just run with the first idea that comes to mind, and that is most present with Despicable Me 3.

I do believe that there has been a conundrum that has been reached: these movies are making money hand over fist, so much so that it is actually staggering if you sit down and crunch the numbers ($3.7 billion worldwide in ticket sales, and that is not a typo).

I am a firm believer that originality should be rewarded, and everybody involved does deserve kickbacks for the first movie that they crafted. As time has gone on, they've essentially cornered a market with no quality control and made a series that is critic-proof.

I do think that there is going to be a big drop off sometime really soon, because they've been phoning in these "stories" for three movies now if you include Minions. Despicable Me 3 isn't really a movie, it is about 9 subplots that are weaved together, and they seldom intersect.

I mean seriously, it reached a point where I was forgetting story threads because there is just that much juggling. It would be fine if there was 3 or 4 subplots and an actual main story line, but there isn't one that gets more screen time over another, and given that there is no standout for being interesting, it ends up being a hard movie to care about.

I know it sounds like I am coming down hard on this, but I don't actually hate this. It's well-animated and the best in series in that department, and some of the jokes actually hit from time to time.

Much like the latest Pirates movie, I still got some entertainment value out of it, even though I do think it is a series that has run its course and is just spinning its wheels at this point. Despicable Me 3 is watchable, but there's no reason to get excited over it.

When they inevitable release a sequel movie in the next two years, I hope they actually figure out a direction to take this series in, but I'm not getting my hopes up.