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Sci-fi is the genre where special effects come into their own and 3D animation can turn the watchable into the spectacular.
So with Despicable Me having both these components, plus a great concept, Universal must have decided they didn’t need to try too hard with the script and in the event turned out something rather mediocre. Expensive, but very, very mediocre.
Gru is a middle-aged inventor who channels his fantastical skills into pulling off evil crimes in the hope that one of them will bring him the notoriety he desperately seeks.
His latest challenge to himself is to steal the moon, but he gets side-tracked by three little orphan girls who introduce him to a world his isolation has previously prevented him from entering.
The opening of the film is in a desert, where a crime of great significance has been committed which makes world news.
A little later we join our hero in a business meeting and it is here that the desert incident is dealt with from Gru’s point of view, but now the tension is gone, it’s all just back story and comes much, much too late.
Gru’s in-the-moment reaction to being eclipsed by a young usurper would have been most entertaining and would also have given him a clear motivation to take greater and greater risks to win the crown of disrepute he so covets.
Also, in Gru’s basement there are a crew of hundreds of cute little yellow people who toil to help the inventor create his destructive weapons, yet these adorable minions clearly do not belong in this house of evil.
There is no explanation for their existence or how they got there, or why everyone is still beavering away at Gru’s inventions when nothing he has ever created has been a success. Instead of explaining what is already there, stray storylines and gadgets are thrown in willy-nilly, all meant to fill the gaps left by ideas that remain incomplete.
The only thing that could have saved this film is humor, but with just a couple of amusing lines in the entire ninety five minutes, this just didn’t happen. So where does this leave Universal’s latest offering?
Any children’s animation has an instant audience, as long as Mum and Dad will take them, but therein lies the crunch. Kids don’t read reviews, but parents do, and if they’re going to spend their hard-earned leisure time driving to the movies, finding parking, shelling out for tickets and pop-corn won’t they at least want to enjoy a little cinematic pleasure? This film fails to hit the mark.