Arts & Entertainment

'Despicable Me 2' Delivers Delightful and Charming Family Fun

Animated film stars Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig.

By Leslie Combemale

As satisfaction at the movies goes, nothing makes me happier than a really great animated feature. After some mediocre offerings earlier in the year, finally this past holiday weekend something really great arrived. The quirky heart of the original is kept intact, but in "Despicable Me 2," new elements blend with the zest of the first to make it a great time at your local theater.

In the movie, we find the former villainous mastermind Gru settling in and using his best qualities to be a fun-loving adoptive dad to Margo, Agnes and Edith; both he and the audience fell for them in the original. Instead of attempting to rule the world or destroy civilization, he has put his minions and an increasingly dissatisfied Dr. Nefario to work developing a brand of jams and jellies.

[Click here to find showtimes for "Despicable Me 2" in and around Arlington.]

The girls have started talking about Gru "getting out there," and his neighbor is playing matchmaker with him and various lonely hearts, who remind him of his painful lackluster history as a reject and girl-repellent. Enter some nefarious villain who is turning various creatures into indestructible killing machines. For the AVL (the Anti-Villain League), this simply won't do, and they send enthusiastic agent Lucy Wilde to recruit Gru for their mission to track down and stop whoever is responsible.

There are many aspects of "Despicable Me 2" that make it enjoyable for both adults and children. The filmmakers know they have a good thing in the minions, and they figure more prominently in the plot and the film's humor, with gags and recurring jokes seamlessly woven into and enhancing the story.

The addition of several new characters also adds a lot to make the sequel fun and its own cinematic animal, to be enjoyed for its own sake. Both potential villain Eduardo and his son, Antonio, a Latin-lover-in-training who woos Margo, are great inventions with tons of nuanced quirks, like Antonio's studied use of his thick shock of hair.

Kristen Wiig plays Lucy with great comic timing and feminine verve, bringing a deeper sweetness to the all-business exterior of the geeky wannabe spy. Lucy is a well-meaning, flamboyant, bluntly enthusiastic yet lovable blabbermouth, who is constantly striving to be great at her job and becomes increasingly enamored with Gru.

Family is a big theme in this, as it was in the first film, and what makes the evil-spoiling plot mesh so well with scenes of Gru's interactions with his kids, the minions, Dr. Nefario and Lucy, is that family is always in the forefront in his mind and in his decisions. There are several poignant scenes that could seem heavy-handed but work more than they should thanks to Steve Carell's consummate skill as a voice actor and the way his interactions with the other characters are skillfully written in the great script by Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul.

It is well known that the business model at Illumination, the production company responsible for this wildly popular franchise, requires a tight budget. "Despicable Me" came in at around $70 million, and this sequel cost only $76 million. These are impressive numbers compared to Pixar, which, as a point of comparison, spent $180 million on "Wall-E" and $200 million on "Toy Story 3."  

Illumination has created such a thoroughly delightful and charming addition to the world of animation with the budget-conscious "Despicable Me 2." That's a great example for other studios to follow. It could help keep the genre fresh and exciting, utilizing inventive, cost-saving production techniques and employing forward-thinking animators for years to come, which is great news for lovers of feature-length cartoons.

This screening I brought with me a huge fan of the original, complete with T-shirt, movie soundtrack in the car on the way there and a stuffed Minion riding shotgun with us. He loved "Despicable Me 2" even more than the first one. By bringing more movie minions into the fandom fold, Illumination Entertainment can likely look forward to another huge hit with their 2014 film "Minions" about the yellow henchmen, pre-Gru.

If Illumination continues its streak of inventive scripting and well-developed characterizations, there's nothing but more success in their future.

About this column: Leslie Combemale, "Cinema Siren," is a movie lover and aficionado in Northern Virginia. Alongside Michael Barry, she owns ArtInsights, an animation and film art gallery in Reston Town Center. She has a background in film and art history. She often is invited to present at conventions such as the San Diego Comic Con, where she has been a panelist for The Art of the Hollywood Movie Poster and the Harry Potter Fandom discussion. Visit her gallery online at www.artinsights.com and see more of her reviews and interviews on www.artinsightsmagazine.com.


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