So, while the others here at the site were acting like grownups and watching Inception, my friend Jake and I decided to fight maturity for an afternoon and watch Despicable Me. This debut  film from Illumination Entertainment has an excellent concept going for it: a comic-book story not only told from the perspective of a supervillain, but one in which superheroes don’t even exist.  The main character, Gru – voiced by Steve Carell, and whose design looks like an homage to either Uncle Fester or the old-school cartoon Grimly Feendish – does not battle any good guys or even the law; he lives incognito (sort of) in the suburbs and uses the weapons at his disposal mainly to combat the headaches of everyday life, and to steal landmarks.  He is aided by decrepit old mad scientist Dr. Nefario (voiced by Russell Brand) and an army of minions.

Things are going just fine until he starts getting upstaged by a new younger supervillain named Vector – voiced by Jason Segal and who also seems to be a nod to older cartoons, as he looks an awful lot like a grownup version of Mandark from Dexter’s Lab.  Vector steals a shrink-ray from Gru, who stole it from the Chinese military, and keeps it locked up in a streamlined, seemingly impenetrable fortress.  But when Gru sees a trio of orphans get clearance to enter because they’re selling cookies, he takes it as an opportunity and adopts the girls with no foresight at all.  What follows is a typical “tough guy gets won over by the adorable moppets” progression.  Gru and Vector are characters with all kinds of potential and it’s disappointing to see such a conventional storyline.

That being said, Despicable is a really well-crafted and funny movie, with clever visual gags (one of my favorites: Vector “hides” a stolen pyramid by painting it to match the sky and sticking it behind his house).  The gross-out humor and pop-culture references are kept to a blessed minimum as most of the humor revolves around Gru and Vector’s gadgets.   And for being obligatory Adorable Movie Children, the girls Margo, Edith and Agnes, aren’t too obnoxious.  The youngest, unicorn-obsessed Agnes, is actually pretty cute and at least resembles a real child in her behavior.  The real show-stealers, though, are the little minions, perhaps the greatest marketing ploys ever; they’re adorable, mischievous, practically indestructible and they don’t spout off annoying one-liners because they speak their own chirpy language; and by the way, you don’t need the downloadable translator promo for them either, their actions make it pretty easy to figure out what they’re saying.

We saw the movie in 3D, which I usually hate, but I have to admit it’s utilized beautifully here; the picture quality doesn’t suffer at all and most of the “comin’ at ya” moments are actually halfway relevant to the plot.  There’s also a funny bit in the end credits with the minions that’s basically just playing around with the effect.  The voicework is well done too, especially Carell and Elsie Fisher (who voiced Agnes and is an actual little girl as opposed to an adult trying to sound like one), although it kind of smacks of stunt casting; I wouldn’t have known Russell Brand – who, in all fairness, did a good job -  and Julie Andrews were even in the movie except their names were on the credits, which sort of begs the question, why bother with more name actors when an experienced voice actor could have worked just as well and cost less?  But at least it never crossed the line into obnoxious like some animated movies (cough *Kung fu Panda * cough).

The actual worst part of Despicable Me was the horrible horrible trailers that ran before it: I’m glad I’m not a parent because even the thought of being dragged to something like Rio, Megamind, Tangled, Cats and Dogs 2 or Alpha & Omega make me want to start fires.  Factoring in the added cost of the 3D I would place Despicable Me as a high matinee; it’s not iconic but it’s worth seeing on a big screen.  Just show up late enough to skip the previews.