Despicable Me 2 (2013)

"Good day, Mr Sheepsbutt."

"Ramsbottom!"

This is a bloody good film and well funny although, of course, it's now impossible for Gru to be a proper super villain again. Instead he works for a group of comedy special agents while having a love interest, looking after his daughters and losing Dr Nefarious to a proper supervillain. It's a predictable set-up, but who cares; it's funny.

Seeing Gru playing the part of dad to his three cute little girls will never stop being funny, and the birthday party at the start is hilarious. Not quite so comedic, but heartwarming nonetheless, is his developing relationship with Lucy Wilde. Her introduction, though, having a gadget for everything, is highly amusing.

Also amusing is the idea of Gru now using all his supervillain stuff to, er, make jam. The minions are funny and cute, obviously. My favourite scenes are probably the ones during Gru's date with that horrible conformist woman. And, when it seems that plot convenience is to separate them, there's a hilariously tense scene with Gru trying to pluck up the courage to pick up the phone and ask her out. Inevitably, the girls end up with a new mum.

All of that sounds excessively soppy for a comedy, and it is, but again who cares as there are laughs aplenty. This is just as good as it's predecessor.

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.

Rock of Ages (2012)

“Now look at him. Married to a woman who looks like she’s been hibernating in Margaret Thatcher’s bumhole.

I think I’ll just drop the obligatory opening sentence about not usually liking musicals when reviewing musicals. It just doesn’t wash any more. Instead I‘ll talk about ‘80s rock, which, being of the Grunge generation, I’ve only come to appreciate since my late twenties (I’m now 35). I love a lot of these songs (much as, like everyone, I now loathe that song by Journey for the usual reasons), and it’s interesting, being a little deaf and a user of subtitles, to learn lyrics to an awful lot of songs.

This is a fairly standard musical love story, plot-wise, but there’s a lot of fun along the way. The music is superb, and I particularly like the mash-ups. Even Tom Cruise can sing a bit, and is actually tolerable enough to justify his casting, bizarre though it is.

There’s a lot of wit and fun along the way, though, much of it in the person of Russell Brand. He gets all the best lines: The reference to “body porridge” had me convulsed with laughter. He’s an odd fit in this film, and it’s surreal to see him of all people in a gay kiss with Alec Baldwin, but he’s the best thing about it. I also have to praise Paul Giamatti (as I always do) for a splendidly hissable turn as the baddie.

The film takes a deliciously ironic look at the rock ‘n’ roll dream, skewering loads of rock clichés while also making it clear that it’s all done with love. Catherine Zeta Jones’ Tipper Gore-like character is made to look as stupid as Gore was in real life in the funniest part of the film, and gets her comeuppance.

There’s one slight niggle, though. I realise that ‘80s hair rock is intrinsically bound up with misogyny and very much a man’s world, but a lot of this is shown here without comment: the bands are all male and Zeta Jones’s character is essentially brought down by being slut-shamed by a man. I realise that this sort of film is hardly the place for lengthy discourses on gender politics, but perhaps the balance is a little too far the other way.

That aside, though, I loooooved this film.