The third helping of the blockbuster Despicable Me series featuring Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig makes all the right moves – but to incrementally less successful effect
The Despicable Me series has shown there is life outside Pixar and Disney, both commercially and artistically, in the blockbuster animation world, with its sentimental-querulous figurehead Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) and fondness for idiosyncratic grotesques. So here we are at number three – not counting, of course, the prequel-spinoff Minions, in which Gru’s babbling army of small yellow helpers took centre stage. While all the elements that brought the first two Despicable Mes inordinate popularity are present and correct, it might perhaps be churlish to suggest that the charm is beginning to wear off – just a tiny bit.
On the face of it, this third film simply extends the sentimental undertow of its predecessors. Having acquired children (in DM1) and a wife (Lucy, voiced by Kristen Wiig, in DM2), Gru this time discovers he has a twin, Dru (voiced, again, by Carell). Possessed of hair, a sunny outlook and substantial material possessions, Dru is pitched as the polar opposite to his surly, self-hating long-lost brother; he is also keen to re-establish the family tradition of supervillany – the very practice Gru has turned his back on. It’s only a matter of minutes before a heated sibling rivalry is raging.
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