Despicable Me 3 Review: More For Grownups Than For The Kids

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After three movies, one would have hoped that studio Illumination would have refined their stories to take their sometimes super-agent, sometimes super-villain and his merry band of banana-loving minions and give them something insightful to do. Failing that they might expand on their repertoire of jokes. Unfortunate they really haven’t come up with anything new, in fact, they rather go back several steps.

This time around a villain named Balthazar Bratt who was once a 1980s child star who played a villain on TV. After his show had been cancelled when he hit puberty, his career faltered and he went off the rails. Finally losing his grip on reality, he became in real life the villain he originally played on his series. Gru succeeds in preventing Bratt from making off with the world’s largest diamond. A few brief scenes later, Bratt succeeds in re-stealing the diamond. In the aftermath Gru is fired from the Anti-Villains League and he has to figure out what to do next.

When Gru refuses to return to his own life of villainy to help bring in the bacon, his minions revolt and walk out on him. A message out of the blue reveals an unknown separated at birth twin of Gru’s named Dru (they of course look exactly alike, only with a blonde full head of hair).

Most of the better entertainment is provided by 80s reference jokes thrown around by Bratt, who has a cassette-based playlist that would make Star-Lord proud. Rubik’s Cubes, break dancing, and everything else from the era that nary a kid in the audience would have any idea about. A fair number of the millennials in the audience would be hard pressed to get most of the references. The storyline itself is also a bit older than the key demographic target for the film, dealing with job loss, changing careers, and step-parent woes (from the perspective of the parent, not the kids).

Yea, the minions steal most of the scenes they’re in, including when they’re arrested en-masse and thrown into an ultra-max prison. They promptly take over and make sure that the rest of the inmates know who’s in charge. But with each minion set-piece, the laughs and engagement with the audience gets less and less. I never thought I’d tire of these awesome little guys, but it really feels like I’ve seen this all before.

It’s not a bad family film, it’s just not really all that special. There’s a third act with some fun action in the big battle throw-down, and that lifts things out of being deserving of a lesser score.

Starring: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig and Trey Parker, the film is directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda, co-directed by Eric Guillon and written by Cinco Paul & Ken Daurio, the animated film is produced by Illumination’s Chris Meledandri and Janet Healy, and executive produced by Chris Renaud.

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