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Despicable Me 2 Movie Review

Despicable Me 2 is a 2013 animated family comedy film produced by Illumination. It’s a solid sequel that is not as good as the original, but it’s still a lot of fun.

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“I am the league’s director, Silas Ramsbottom.

Ha, ha. Bottom“

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When a new criminal comes to town, the Anti-Villain League decides to hire Gru in order to fight him off. While Gru initially refuses, he eventually agrees after his aide goes back to his evil ways. This is obviously the point in the franchise where Gru is fully a good guy, which is I guess better than to have the prolonged conflict of his ways. Lost is some of the fun edge on him, but at least he is still very amusing with Carell once again delivering a stupendous voice performance.

This time around there is Kristen Wiig to help him out and she is reliably outstanding as a great comedic actress. Lucy Wilde is such a fun new addition to this roster of characters as she is delightfully goofy, but also super cool. Her design is one that is also rather ugly, but it works as this entire studio is all about the more pronounced cartoony aesthetic.

Their romance worked and is the best part of the movie. The horrible dates that Gru had to go through were super entertaining to follow while everybody trying to hook him up was very funny throughout. I am praising these romantic and comedic subplots so much because the villain storyline is uninspired and not all that great. El Macho is a forgettable villain and most of the action here is uninspired.

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It is in the fun scenes that may be thought of as fillers that the movie succeeds wildly, which is weird but that is how this entire franchise operates. The main plot is never the driving force here. As for the kids, they are much less memorable this time around, but Margo grew up quite a bit, which was essential for the series, and the other two are as cute as ever. That opening party with Gru acting out the princess role was hilarious.

The animation is still very polished and strong, but again entirely lacking in artistic sensibilities. The backgrounds are cool and fun, but hardly particularly memorable. Where the general style is lacking the aforementioned character designs worked out splendidly. The evil Kevin was particularly strongly animated and quite a fun, goofy addition to this movie.

There is a strong feeling that I continue to have about these movies and that is the redundancy of its spy/villain/action storylines. Those are main, but maybe the franchise would be better without them. I can’t help but wonder whether these films would be improved without them and maybe they could just focus on situational and slapstick comedy and see how that goes. Not to go into the full ‘Minions’ category, but to focus on the main characters and that would be awesome.

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Speaking of the small yellow guys, their roles are significantly enlarged in Despicable Me 2, which was to be expected as the original was such a hit. That led to even stronger box office for this one. While they are fun, I still find them to be great sidekick fodder. They got too much screen time this time around while Gru and Lucy were more memorable.