Despicable Me 2 (2013) Movie Review

DESPICABLE ME 2 (2013) MOVIE REVIEW

Having not seen the original Despicable Me, I wasn't at all excited for this movie when announced. After seeing it however, I wish I had been more stoked about seeing it. 

Much like the previous film, our main protagonist once again is Gru (Steve Carell) who has turned from a villain to a neutral man who just wants to protect his adopted trio of children. After one of the daughter's birthday parties, Gru and two other minions are kidnapped by a woman named Lucy (Kristen Wiig) who is a special agent working for Anti-Villain League. The reason that the league kidnapped him is because they needed help in tracking down a villain that has jumped back onto the scene after mysteriously jumped onto the scene of evil. Since they know nothing of his whereabouts, they need Gru's knowledge of evilness to help put a stop to him once and for all. Now tagged along with the very people that kidnapped him, he is now teamed up with Lucy and the duo must put a stop to this unknown threat. For a children's movie, the story in this is surprisingly very interesting and intense at times. Around half way during the flick, Gru begins to feel the standard emotion any person feels in these types of movies and that is love towards Lucy. Although it was incredibly predictable what was going to happen with their relationship as a whole, it did not bring the film down one little bit. To sum up, the plot in Despicable Me 2 was funny, dramatic and intense all at the same time. 

The major thing that made Despicable Me 1 such a phenomena was because of the little yellow creatures simply named minions. As expected, they returned in the sequel and to my surprise, they moved away from the slapstick humour of punching each other and went for a more skit related approach, and this worked in a tremendously hilarious way. I'm not sure whether it was the constant yelling at each, the perfectly timed deliveries or their obsession with bananas but one thing for sure is, it's that it worked so perfectly. While the minions were spectacular, barely being funnier in terms of respect and ridiculousness were two people, Eduardo and El Macho (Benjamin Bratt). In Eduardo's humour, it is all about the Mexican stereotyping and the constant dancing and to make it all fit, they made him obese. And of course, it worked. Not to be outshone by Eduardo is El Macho who has one of the greatest opening introductions to his character in any movie. I'm not going to spoil what his opening is, but all I'm saying is if someone has recorded it on YouTube  go there because it is defiantly watching, just like the rest of the film. 

While this particular movie was in 3-D, I chose to not see it in 3-D mainly because I went to a 2-D session, so yeah. Moving on. Even without the 3-D, the CGI in the movie was actually really beautiful. Every piece of grass looked like it had its own team working on it to make it look and feel vibrant, and the same can be said about the colours used. As for the voice work, Steve Carell once again reprises his role as Gru and of course does a great job. A newcomer, Kristen Wiig, also does an equally if not better job than Steve at her role as Lucy. To me, the best voice in the movie was Dr. Nefario's (Russell Brand). This is because when watching the movie, it never occurred to me that that was Brand's voice throughout the entirety of the flick.

To conclude, Despicable Me 2 is a great movie to take your family too. Even if you think that no other kids movie can be as good as Monster's University, well then you're probably right. Still though, this movie is still a great time for all ages, maybe excluding babies as some imagery used mayyy scare them, because if I saw this as a baby, I know it would scare me. 

RATING: 7.6/10