Despicable Me 3

Voices of: Steve Carell, Kristin Wiig, Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Nev Scharrel, Trey Parker, Steve Coogan, Julie Andrews, Jenny Slate, Pierre Coffin
Directed by: Kyle Balda, Pierre Coffin, Eric Guillon
Rating: PG
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Action
2017

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Gru (Steve Carell) is shocked to learn he has a brother, who wants him to pull off another heist.

Review:

Tim: I've never been a fan of any of the Despicable Me movies. They just seem so basic, so stupid. And yet, because they have the Minions, kids eat them up. It's not a surprise that this movie made $100 million less than Despicable Me 2 at the box office- it's one sign that audiences realize these movies aren't all that great. In this film, the big new add is that we get Gru's long-lost brother! (of course, his name is Dru). That isn't enough to represent a step backwards in quality. This franchise continues to underwhelm me.

The biggest appeal of these movies is certainly the Minions. I find them annoying, but to each his own. I can't imagine that a ton of kids really love Gru- he's clearly not the main draw. Unfortunately for this franchise, we saw with the awful Minions movie that you can't really base a film around them. So, we're left with the lackluster Gru. And this movie decides to take that underwhelming character and basically duplicate him into a twin brother! Now we have two lackluster characters. Awesome. That being said, Gru's daughters have always been the emotional anchor of the film, so at least we get some sequences of them.

The story here is pretty basic and pretty forgettable. There's a new villain in town. I had to look up his name- Balthazar Bratt. I guess he's a decent villain, the nostalgia for the 1980s is a funny characteristic. He's ultimately too unmemorable, but he's not terrible. Gru and Dru and the whole family have to stop him. There's a giant robot battle at the end that's fairly decent, I suppose. Still, the whole thing just reeks of mid-tier talent. The characters aren't great. The story was average. The movie isn't particularly funny or entertaining to any but the youngest viewers (my two year old was mildly engaged). It felt like a cash grab- make another movie so we can sell more minions toys. There wasn't any depth or heart to the film. This is really the problem with all of Illumination Entertainment's animated films. They all feel very mid-tier. They don't have even close to the emotional depth of Pixar and they're missing out on the "hits" of the hit-or-miss Dreamworks animation. I haven't seen Hop, but other than that, the only Illumination film I liked was Sing. That's 1 out of 6 films that were good (this one makes it 1 out of 7). The movies make money, though, so no one seems to care about the quality too much.

There's undoubtedly going to be a Despicable Me 4, so I'll see you back here again in a few years. My only hope at this point is that the box office continues to plummet to the point where we can stop getting these bad movies.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 5.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Despicable Me, Despicable Me 2, Minions