Despicable Me

Spoiler Level: Medium

First let me thank Steve for giving me the free pass to the preview screening, and giving me the opportunity to take my daughter to see this movie! Thanks, Steve! (And thanks to Todd for giving the passes to Steve!)

I also wish I had scanned the free pass, as it had a great design for the movie on it, which I had assumed was the movie poster. Turns out I can only find the teaser poster online and can't find that design at all, so I'm going with this nice international poster instead.

I was really looking forward to this movie. The trailers look great: anti-hero evil villain Gru getting the snot beat out of him while trying to infiltrate rival villain Vector's HQ; Gru picking on little kids; Gru's minions beating the snot out of each other. This looked like a great slapstick comedy in the vein of Looney Tunes.

And all that's in there. There's some edgy humor and some great laughs. But there's also something far more scarier that I had no idea was in this movie:

Three.
Little.
Girls.

And from the moment I realized they weren't just another bunch of kids Gru was being mean to, the whole story became exactly what you'd expect it to be. It wasn't bad-- just predictable, and not what I thought the movie was going to be about. The dad in me enjoyed it, but the 20-year-old who was looking forward to some good cartoon violence felt let down.

The animation is wonderful, with a lot of breathtaking scenes. Hans Zimmer delivers yet another fantastic musical score. The 3D effects were more hit and miss: there's some great moments, especially in the opening and closing credits, but the rest of the movie they were pretty unnoticeable.

So all in all, it's a fun little family film with a some funny edgy moments.