After a young new villain, Vector, gets huge media attention for stealing the great Pyramid of Giza, his rival villain Gru wants to top him by shrinking the Moon—and stealing it. However, Vector has the coveted shrinking ray in his impenetrable fortress, so Gru and his yellow Minions forge a plan. Gru notices that Vector allowed the three orphan girls Margo, Edith and Agnes to enter the fortress to buy cookies from them. Gru thus adopts the girls in his house and sends them to Vector’s fortress once again, hiding miniature robots inside their cookies which help him steal the shrinking ray. When Vector kidnaps the girls, Gru rescues them, and decides to keep them, becoming a better person.
For a movie of such reputation, “Despicable Me” is good, but nowhere near as funny or ingeniously creative as one would have expected. At the time of its premiere, it was hyped as the best thing ever, when in reality it is closer to a standard episode of “Dexter’s Lab”. Its biggest legacy is the proliferation of the yellow Minions in modern pop culture, which became the trademark of the film’s numerous sequels and spin-offs. “Despicable Me” works the best in the intro, when a kid falls off from a platform on to the Pyramid of Cheops, yet it just bounces him up, revealing to be just a balloon mockup, and that the real pyramid was “stolen” by a villain, Vector. The movie follows the other, "lesser" villain, Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), with several gags that describe hs charachter—in the intro, he spots a crying kid on the street, then blows up a baloon animal for the kid, only to pop it with a needle to "anti-comfort" him; whereas even his back yard has yellow, neglected grass, as opposed to the ideal green gardens of his neighbors. Gru is a strong antagonist, and the movie doesn't have a strong protagonist all the way until the three orphan girls, Margo, Edith and Agnes, show up, who, as incompatible as they are to this story, give it a soul and lead it to a satisfaying conclusion by pulling Gru away from his "villain solipsism" to turn him into the hero at the end. As ludicrous and flimsy this concept of the villain Gru adopting the three orphan girls is, it still works, because it has far more sense than the initial plot of Gru trying to steal the Moon, which is ludicrous and flimsy and does not work. A fun, light, albeit inconsequential comedy film, though it is indicative that it works better during its emotional moments than in its humorous ones.
Grade:++
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