DESPICABLE ME Review By Guest Blogger David Lee

The following is a guest review of DESPICABLE ME, by Rama’s SCREEN Reader David Lee. If you’d like to submit your movie review, you can do so via e-mail: rama@ramasscreen.com. Reviews are subject to editing and I reserve the right to decide whether or not they’re worthy to be posted on Rama’s SCREEN..

Hi kids. If you’re reading this review, then lemme just say RUN. RUN WHILE YOU –wait no. Don’t run. I swear I’m harmless. Freak accident with the cookie jar and a Red Bull. Before I get to the review here, I believe introductions are in order. Name’s Dave, and this is my guest review for Despicable Me. Before you read any further, a couple disclaimers are in order:..

1: There’s gonna be a lot of spoilers in this review, so if you haven’t seen this movie? Don’t read anymore. See that shiny red X button on the upper right? Yeah..make with the clicky clicky right about now. Come back when you’ve seen the movie.

2: As you’ve kind of seen, I’m something of a wiseass. As such, this review will be laden with sarcasm. But don’t worry, I promise to keep it as tame as I can, given my usual.

Now that the disclaimers and introductions are out of the way, onto the review!

As I said before, this review is for Despicable Me. Starring Steve Carell as Gru, Jason Segel as Vector, Miranda Cosgrove as Margo, Dana Gaier as Edith, Elsie Fisher as Agnes, and Pierre Coffin as the Minions, I’ll start my reviews with the cast and characters first and what I thought of them.

Normally I don’t much like Steve Carell. I’ll get that right out of the way right now. To me, he’s like the Diet Coke Will Ferrell. Half as funny and half as expensive. However, Carell knocked this role out of the PARK as Gru. From his opening sequences with the freeze ray to the ending with the girls, I never once heard Michael Scott or Maxwell Smart coming out of Gru’s mouth. Hell, if I hadn’t have known that it was Carell in the first place, I would’ve never known. Carell’s portrayal of Gru ranged from absolute bastard (within reason for a kids’ movie- the freezing of an entire coffee shop line was hysterical) to caring adoptive father, and I could buy every second of it. Kudos to Steve Carell for bringing a super-villain who’s past his prime to life. The Gru character itself was a joy to watch on screen.

You could feel his frustrations as he is denied his bank loan, annoyance at Vector’s very presence, and onward to his warming up to the three children. The children themselves were a major plot point for the movie that I’ll be covering here in a bit, but I will say that outside of Margo? I didn’t really feel too attached to the kids. Agnes’s funniest lines were in the trailer, and outside of Elsie Fisher’s comedic timing, she was your stereotypical young child who wants to fit in. I wasn’t sure if Boo from Monster’s, Inc found her way to Gru’s doorstep. Edith was pretty much a non-entity, and Dana Gaier failed in her role to make Edith worth caring about. Miranda Cosgrove’s Margo character was the best child of the three. As the oldest one of the trio, Margo was always looking after Edith and Agnes and it’s her that bonds the best with Gru. Miranda Cosgrove did a very good job with her voice inflections to make Margo believable as a pre-teen matriarch that wanted to take care of her peers. However, it was never detailed if the three were related. That should’ve been outlined.

Pierre Coffin’s Minions were absolutely HYSTERICAL everytime they were on the scene, and I’ll be writing separately about them. Where this otherwise stellar cast fails is with Jason Segel as Vector. What a pathetic WASTE of a character. I never EVER felt even remotely interested or anything when it came to Vector. His tagline for Vector was that “he does evil side to side and of a greater magnitude!”…with a pelvic thrust that really didn’t belong much in a children’s movie. At one point Vector does battle with Gru, who’s trying to get into Vector’s lair in the beginning. During this sequence, Vector wipes his ass with the keyboard to shoot Gru. That’s right. HE WIPES HIS ASS. What the Hell? Before any of you go “HEY YOU NEED TO ENJOY THE RAUNCH HUMOR” or some crap like that, lemme make something clear: I’m always down for the dick and fart jokes. I’m one of the crudest people on Rama’s Screen that I’ve seen..and this was too far even for me. Wiping your ass with a keyboard in a kid’s movie? Seriously? Vector’s main lines in the movie revolve around the phrase “OH YEAH”. It was more like “Oh no, shut the Hell up with that AGAIN.” It felt like Vector was a child trying to play in the big kid’s pool. There’s no way he could’ve been bought as a credible villain in any flick whatsoever. I can’t tell you if Jason Segel did good or not because I really don’t know the actor…but he bombed this role, tell you that.

Next up on my agenda is the actual movie’s plot and graphics. Despicable Me was my first ever 3D movie. That’s right, I was a 3D virgin. At first, I honestly thought this was a Pixar movie because of the quality of graphics. Boy was I wrong, and kudos to Universal for knocking the graphics out of the park! From Gru’s evil lair to the Minions to Vector’s great white shark, everything was very well designed and rendered. The 3D never felt forced at for one second and I actually found myself reaching out to try and touch the ball that Agnes shoots in the carnival. The rollercoaster sequence was bloody amazing to see in 3D, as it felt like I was in that car with Gru and the kids! Now I know what you’re saying. “Dave, if these graphics are as killer as you’re touting, what about the plot itself? Is it as sick?” Lemme go ahead and answer that with a resounding HELL YEAH.

The plot itself revolves around a slight past-his-prime supervillain Gru. Gru here wants one thing: to be the best super-villain ever. The movie opens up with a scene where you find out that someone’s jacked the Pyramid of Giza. Personally, I thought it was PyramidS of Giza, but whatever. Doesn’t matter much to me. So this kid climbs up a scaffolding, takes a nose dive off on accident and it looks like he’s gonna do a backbreaker on the pyramid steps. But what’s this? IT’S THE WORLD’S BIGGEST WHOOPIE CUSHION! Kinda. Turns out that it was all one big air inflation, and the pyramid’s been jacked, like I said. That sets the scene for Gru’s introduction. As I said earlier, Gru’s introduction as a bonafide badass supervillain is shown by him freezing an entire coffee shop line to get some free gear after he pops a animal balloon in a kid’s face. You learn that Gru’s responsible for stealing the Times Square Jumbotron as well as Las Vegas’s Statue of Liberty and Eiffel Tower. But Gru wants more. He’s got the biggest ambition yet: Homeboy wants to steal the frickin’ MOON. How, you ask? By shrinking the damn thing down and jacking it! But to quote the Mask, “Can’t make the scene if you don’t got the green!”..so Gru goes to the Bank Of Evil. Hilarity ensues as Gru is denied his bank loan and told that if he wants it, he has to show the Bank that he can acquire the shrink ray that he doesn’t even have yet. So what’s a badass supervillain to do? Why..go and jack the shrink ray! Gru does so, and uh oh, here comes Viciously Stupid—err I mean Vector to spoil it. Shrink ray gets stolen from Gru, who’s stolen it from the good guys. Following me still? And that’s how the film starts up, pretty much.

The 3 kids enter the party at around the half hour mark as Gru sees that the kids get into Vector’s place by selling him cookies. So apparently Viciously Underwhelming—Vector is supposed to be a credible threat to Gru, but he lets in 3 kids to sell him cookies. Right. Gru notes this and off we go. These 3 kids are Margo, Edith and Agnes. They’re orphans from Hattie’s Home For Girls, and they want so desperately to be adopted. Problem is, Hattie is a beey-otch and she knows it. Gru shows up, adopts them and in a hilarious line, Gru woo’s Hattie by delivering a line to her in Spanish..telling her that she has a face like a donkey. That’s right, Gru’s got jokes, kids. Gru adopts the 3 to use them as pawns so he can get into Viciously Boring’s lair. (I’m not even gonna correct Vector anymore. He sucks and both you and I know it, reader.)But as time goes on in the movie, the three girls soften Gru and he falls for them. But his evil Doctor doesn’t like this, and he ends up getting the kids taken back so he can make sure that Gru follows through with the plot. I can see where ol’ Doctor Nefario’s coming from..so he’s excused. Homeboy wants to do evil. For the Greater Good and all that. Gru jacks the moon and we find out that the shrink ray’s effects are temporary and the bigger the item? The quicker they return to normal. To quote Jeff Goldblum from ID4, “Oh SHIT!” Viciously Unnecessary shows up, steals the girls and demands the shrunken moon in exchange for them. Gru gives it up, and Viciously Yawnworthy keeps the kids. Gru goes over 9000 and then cue the madcap chase to get the kids back. Screw the moon, Gru wants his kids! This is where Carell shines the most. You absolutely believe 100% that Gru cares more for the kids than he does about the Moon. The Moon is returned to space in a way that made me laugh (mainly because Viciously Transparent is stuck up there), and all is well. Credits roll, and then there’s a scene after with the minions that made me cry with laughter. Bring your iPhone to get the translations for the Minions: it’s worth it.

Now that the plot paragraph is done, let’s address the show-stealers themselves: THE MINIONS. Oh my GOD these little yellow bastards are hysterical. Be sure that you’re watching every single scene closely that they are a part of because they’re ALWAYS up to something somewhere. They’re rude, crude and utterly unintelligible for the most part. Before you start to question, lemme cut you off: The difference between Vector’s crudeness and the Minions’ crudeness is simple: The Minions aren’t trying to be crude. Their worst scene is when one of them is photocopying his ass and two others are giggling about it. That’s the worst. Nowhere near as bad as wiping your ass with a keyboard and dry humping the air.

The Minions have a small little connection with Agnes, as her Unicorn gets trashed early on. The Minions are sent to try and get a new one, and the grocery store scene that follows is nothing short of giggleworthy. One dresses up as an infant and the other two dress up like its parents. What? WTF? It works because of how they get into crap. Baby Minion ends up guzzling a 2 liter of coke and getting shot across the store due to the carbonation. But at the end of the scene, these three enter the bedroom where Agnes is sleeping and give her the unicorn back: made of a toilet brush, an inverted ice cream cone and something else for the face. It’s touching to see that they did their best to fix the problem and they do it with style. From the scenes where they’re blowing each other up to when one of them plays DJ on a “Gru-Ray” machine at the end, the Minions steal every single scene that they are a part of.

So overall, this movie is a MUST SEE at the theatres in 3D. DO IT.

Pros: Minions, Everyone but Segel’s voice work, an amazing story, brilliant 3D.

Cons: Jason Segel’s role as Vector, some minor plot holes, the 13 dollar price tag to see a 3D movie.

Dave’s official ruling of the movie: 9 out of 10 (The Rule)