Movie Review: Despicable Me

So this 3D gem has been receiving a lot of buzz. Last I heard it was second in the box office to the greatest movie of the year, Inception (watch Inception). Anyways, I had the pleasure of viewing this Despicable Me with two friends recently. Like always, I'm going to tackle this review in a few different ways, each movie makes me want to do things differently. First, my general thoughts on the film. Second, Universal Studios vs Pixar vs DreamWorks. Third, the cast. Fourth, the audience. Finally, fifth, my grade and final note.
Okay, so Despicable Me in general was a cute movie. Naturally it is designed to be a family film. The best part about this, though, is that it doesn't dive too far into the waters of "Kids Films." One thing I like about "family" films, is how much adult humor seems to get by in them. Now I'm not saying these movies are way too adult. I am saying that a few jokes in the film seemed to go over kids heads, but their parents laughed. To put this in perspective, Planet 51, that was a kids film. Despicable Me was fun for the whole family, it deserved 2nd in the Box Office.
Second, I thought I should mention the CGI animation. When I watched the film, I was a bit surprised to see that it wasn't a Pixar or DreamWorks. From what I've researched, Universal Studios is pretty new at this CGI animated family film stuff. 9 and The Tale of Despereaux seem to be the only other 3D movies made by them. I think Universal did well with the CGI. They seemed to do so much with it. CGI companies like Pixar seem to do cute stuff with the animation such as Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, WALL-E, and all of the animated shorts. Despicable Me ranks up in the realm of the less-cute-more-well-done stuff like The Incredibles and I suppose Up, although I've never seen Up. Now DreamWorks, that seems to be the direction Universal is going with CGI films. With movies like Antz, Shrek, and How to Train Your Dragon, DreamWorks tends to not do "cute" movies and decides to create popular CGI films. So my note to Universal, keep up the good work, you're doing well this early in the game, and take a hint from DreamWorks not Pixar.
The cast! Despicable Me had a surprisingly famous cast. I say it was surprising because I was really only aware of Steve Carell, couldn't recognize the voice of anyone else. Hell, Jacob couldn't recognize Steve Carell as the voice of Gru, I only knew because I follow Carell's work. Russell Brand voiced the old Dr. Nefario, and the British accent finally made sense to me after the film when I saw Brand's name in the credits. SNL's Will Arnett and Kristen Wiig contributed voices to the film, apparently as Mr. Perkins and Miss Hattie. Miranda Cosgrove herself was the voice of the eldest daughter Margo, I found that surprising. My main note here is that all of these actors and actresses can do really good voice acting apparently.
As always, the audience. Okay, so plenty of annoying kids. One kid had the most incredibly obnoxious laugh I've ever heard. His dad was one of those types of guys who grunt for no reason, that was annoying, but I digress. Chris Harper got up twice during the film. But over all, the audience was nice, even with the one crying baby. What else did I expect?
Finally, with it's nice animation, great voice acting, and an actual segment for 3D (forgot to mention), I give this movie a healthy A. See it in theaters, it's worth it I suppose. As for the note, I'll speak on the topic of 3D. This 3D phenomenon is getting to be quite pretentious in my opinion. Most movies featured in 3D don't do ANYTHING for 3D's sake, they just do it because it apparently "looks cool." Yeah, it looks cool if you want to watch the same thing as the 2D film but with headaches and dizziness. Thank goodness Despicable Me did stuff for 3D, I was getting tired of this pointlessly 3D crap. Unfortunately, however, I did not see Despicable Me in 3D, the one time I would have enjoyed it!