Despicable Me (***½)

Directed by: Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud

Starring (voices): Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig, Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Elsie Fisher, Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud

Seen: October 1^st and 4^th 2010

***½ Out of ****

Despicable Me is Universal Studios’ first CGI animation film, and they have burst onto the scene with a brilliant and hilarious movie. The humour is original and even unexpected at times, and I’d recommend this movie to anyone.

Gru (Carell) is the world’s greatest villain. He has a large subterranean lab where he has an army of minions working for him together with his second in command, the old but very driven Dr. Nefario (Brand). When the Great Pyramid of Giza is stolen and Gru is not the culprit, he must find a crime big and daring enough to reassert his position at the top of the super-villain food chain. He fast-tracks a plan that requires a very specific tool, which he manages to steal from a secret lab in East Asia, but he is upstaged as a newcomer super-villain steals it from him on the way home. The newcomer is a young villain named Vector (Segel), an arrogant rich-kid who hides the pyramid he stole, painted blue with white clouds on, in his own backyard.

The Bank of Evil (formerly Lehmann Brothers), under the strong leadership of Mr. Perkins (Arnett), will not give Gru a loan to bankroll his heist unless he has the correct equipment to pull it off. Gru hatches up a few plans to rob Vector, and when most of his attempts fail dismally, he goes for one final and desperate plan – he adopts three little girls who sells cookies door-to-door as part of a plan to gain access to Vector’s vault.  The new role of being dad to the little girls while Dr. Nefario keeps pressuring Gru from the production side of his evil operation with all the other factors that make Gru’s life more complicated cause amusement and excitement to the point where you almost cannot bear it. There are slight reprieves along the way, such as Gru taking the kids on a trip to an amusement park, and here some of the best humour of the movie comes through.

Despicable Me is side-splittingly funny, with the mostly speechless yellow minions bringing some heavy entertainment, even sharing water-cooler talk at their workplace, Gru’s lab. While they all look almost exactly the same (either 2 eyes or 1, with numerous hairstyles), they represent so many different little characters who each bring a little extra spark to the movie. The vocal talent is inspired with Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russel Brand, Julie Andrews and many more making the characters come alive. Even director Pierre Coffin provides the voices for 5 of the minions, while his co-pilot, director Chris Renaud voices one.

All this talk about theft and villainy and an army of ruthless (a very liberally used word) minions, and I’ve not even mentioned how the movie creeps under your skin. At heart this is a story about a boy growing up to try and make his mother proud, and about a strong family bond forming in the most unexpected of circumstances. Hilarious all the way through and surprisingly touching for a rather big part of it, Despicable Me is one of the better animated movies I’ve seen in quite some time.