Saturday 8 March 2014

Despicable Me (2010)

 "Are these beds made out of bombs?"

"Yes, but they are very old and highly unlikely to blow up."

I love Minions. Probably my favourite t-shirt is one with Minions and the TARDIS on it. I am writing this on a smartphone with a Minion cover. They are now ubiquitous, and seem to have much outgrown the film from which they sprung.

Still, this is a modern family Pixar-style animation film like any other and, as expected, while it has both stuff for the kiddies and metatextual stuff for the grown-ups, it is weighted much more towards the latter. It is a perfect concept for a film; a comedy about a supervillain. And Steve Carrell is rather good as Gru, our suburban Dr Evil who is getting a little old, past his best and threatened by younger supervillains.

The main thread of the film- our evil baddie learning to be a big softie as he develops paternal feelings for three little girls he adopts- could easily have been overly soppy, but the tone remains sufficiently silly for this not to happen. It's a very funny film, mashing mundane domesticity with over-the-top supervillainy to great effect.

I love the whole riff on the Bank of Evil- there is, of course, no other sort, and that's part of the subtext of this post-crash film. I also, of course, love any scene involving Vector. 

It's a light and fluffy film, if full of lots of clever little jokes, and it's enormous gun to watch. Let's make one thing clear, though: I did not cry. No. Definitely not.

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