Despicable Me

This French-animated film is extremely entertaining and has the best non-Pixar human-being 3D animation I’ve ever seen. It’s a bit lightweight, but with some very good jokes. The best thing about it are Gru’s minions, little yellow capsules in overalls, but it’s never explained why the film’s universe unquestioningly tolerates the neighbourhood presence of super villains, or what happened to Jemaine Clement. His name appeared prominently in the initial trailer, but it’s impossible to tell which of the minions he voices. Maybe he was supposed to have a larger part*.

It’s not as sentimental as a Disney film, but it’s not cynical enough to not try, and without proper character development there’s ultimately no substance. It looks great (the physics, how the objects and characters move about, are particularly good), but if it was a Pixar film we’d all be terribly disappointed. There’s no proper adult female characters (Julie Andrews is wasted) and it could’ve done with more Addams Family-type darkness… but ultimately how can you not like a film where the antagonist steals one of the Giza pyramids, and hides it in his backyard by painting it blue?

* After looking up the script online: he plays Jerry the Minion, who (ironically) gets shrunk down to the size of a bean.