Despicable Me 2
Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) and the girls are back in the sequel, and Gru has stopped his evil ways - in the first Despicable Me, he stole the moon (but later returned it) and is now concentrating on both being a good father and also operating his jams and jellies business, with which the minions and also Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand) are helping. One day, though, a woman named Lucy (Kristen Wiig) kidnaps him - she works for the AVL, Anti-Villain League, and they need Gru's help in nabbing a bad guy. They set Gru up with a cupcake shop at the mall, so that he can scope out the suspects there, and Gru finally feels back in "his element" again; however, he's totally unprepared for the series of events that happen next, including falling for his business partner Lucy, trying to keep his oldest from falling in love with a restaurant owner's son, and having to rescue the minions when they fall into someone's evil clutches.
Most of this movie was still really funny. It seemed to move at a slow pace, even though it had some CIA/FBI elements like the first movie had, and there were some parts where I was a little bored. The minions are still as cute as ever, although a bit scary when (semi-spoiler) some of them change into evil incarnations of themselves. I also really liked the 3D in the movie; when Despicable Me came out in 2010, the 3D was flawless, and animated movies had just started using 3D in the mainstream, so I would expect nothing less from the 3D in the sequel.
Yes, see this film, but it has my lowest Yes recommendation (3 out of 5 stars). I enjoyed Monsters University more than this one, but fans of the first film will most likely like this one; I liked it, but thought it could have been better. There's a lot of kid-friendly jokes in this one, too (more than in the first), involving fart guns and some other novelties, but at the same time there's a lot here for the adults as well, which is great - in one scene, Gru's youngest daughter, near the end, means to say "I want to make a toast," but instead says "I want to make toast," which was cute. Despicable Me 2 is a decent enough follow-up to the first film, and a good "fluff" movie for summer, but at the same time, I wanted it to be a great film, following in the footsteps of the first movie, and unfortunately that didn't happen.
Despicable Me 2 is in theaters today, July 3rd, and is rated PG with a runtime of 98 minutes. 3 stars out of 5.
