Despicable Me 2
This film just didn’t work for me. That’s really all the review that’s needed for my thoughts on the sequel to 2010’s surprise summer smash. I really enjoyed the 2010 film, which cast Steve Carell as Gru, a supervillain who has a change-of-heart when he finds himself adopting three sisters, and clearly, a lot of other people did as well. However, I think the big sell for other people were Gru’s odd, yellow-skinned Minions, who were just cuckoo and absurdist enough to where the film’s creators managed to get a lot of comedic mileage to go along with the emotional narrative.
This time, the Minions are back, and they are almost entirely front-and-center, leaving Gru (and worse, the girls) off along the edges as he is brought in by a secret agency to try and catch a supervillain looking to do some terrible things. He is recruited by an agent (voiced by Kristen Wiig) who is somewhat smitten, which gets his girls excited about being a full family. That stuff worked for me, but unfortunately, it’s not the focus point of the film, which brings me back to the Minions. Seriously, they’re everywhere, and don’t get me wrong, they’re a lot of fun, but they work best in small doses. By putting them all over the film, the sequel’s creators lost what really sold people on the first film, and ended up making what ends up being a generic animated sequel. I’d like to think the inevitable threequel will see everybody remember that the heart is what matters, but I’m not sure I feel so optimistic.
