Seeing how popular Despicable Me and its sequel and spinoff have been, it was certain that we would be returning back the this world eventually. So that’s why when Despicable Me 3 was announced, many of its fans were hoping that it would be something good enough to satisfy them. In some ways, I can assure you that a lot of those people who love these guys will enjoy what they get, but there’s also a chance that you might leave feeling like it just couldn’t keep up to what came before it.
Entrenched in his life as a hero, Gru (Steve Carell) has built an existence that involves fighting crimes and raising his three little girls along with his wife, Lucy (Kristen Wiig). Things have been going well enough in both the home lives parents and their professional lives as crime fighters, but things start to change once a formidable new villain arrives onto the scene. With the hopes of some amazing weaponry and some old school style, the goal he has in mind will result in revenge on those who left him in the past and moved on to lives without him if he isn’t stopped from achieving his master plan.
Despicable Me 3 contains the type of fun that you would expect from movies like this. And because it’s a movie geared toward kids and because you have so many people working on it behind the scenes, you should anticipate there being a lot stuff going on as it shoots from one scene to another fairly quickly. This makes the movie bearable since there really isn’t anything concrete to grasp onto in terms of some of the core elements of typical filmmaking. Of course, you don’t usually go to animated films of this nature for that, so that’s one reason why I don’t necessarily consider it to be a huge deal.
Speaking of the constant shifting of scenes, the characters that we have to watch also benefit from this in a way. Once we see how this is going to be handled, we get a healthy helping of each significant character as nearly all of them get their own little story lines throughout the film. This allows them to shine and also provides the comedic elements that audiences will be going to see this for. Sure, they don’t always assist in developing the main plot, but they’re putting themselves in a position where it’s hard to keep things as interesting as they were in the first movie of this series.
If I’m being completely honest, I guess you can say that the minions don’t really have much of a genuine storyline. They go off and do their own thing while everyone else is involved in stories that are at least connected to some degree. This could be seen as a bad thing for people who choose to take this seriously. However, the reality is that the creators behind this movie realize that these characters are extremely important to the franchise, so they had to find a way to include them even if they don’t have any reason to actually be there.
Mainly due to the characters and their zany antics, Despicable Me 3 works far better than it probably should have. It’s these features that will likely leave kids (and adults) satisfied with what they get for the short 90 minutes or so that they’re watching. This isn’t necessarily fantastic, but it works with what it has. We’ll see what future movies from this franchise will be able to bring to theaters. When judging it by the new additions to the cast, I can see them going in a few directions that could keep this thing working well for years to come if handled properly.
Rating: PG
Directors:
Pierre Coffin & Kyle Balda
Eric Guillon (co-director)
Cast:
Steve Carell
Kristen Wiig
Trey Parker
Miranda Cosgrove
Dana Gaier
Nev Scharrel
Steve Coogan
Jenny Slate
Julie Andrews
Film Length: 90 minutes
Release Date: June 30, 2017
Distributor: Universal Pictures
