Despicable Me, the first feature from Illumination Entertainment, and Universal's first foray into the vastly overcrowded realm of CGI movies, looked "okay" in the trailer. It looked like light-hearted fun, but not much else. As if Universal was just trying to cash in on the kids' 3D movie market. Fortunately I was pleasantly surprised, the film containing lots of genuine, quirky humour, and an absolutely overwhelming level of colourful cuteness, aided by a cast full of adorable characters. Just try to last the whole film without going "awww!" during at least one of the scenes featuring the three orphans.
While Despicable Me of course doesn't match the celestially lofty standards set by Pixar in terms of modern animation, it manages to succeed due to a focus on character rather than random plotlines and gratuitous fart jokes. Although there is one fart joke. And that's not to say that the story here isn't as crazy as it usually is. Kids will obviously still enjoy it to be sure, but there's certainly more than enough here for adults to enjoy too.
The development of the main character, Gru the supervillain (voiced by Steve Carell), has an actual arc to it, making him more interesting than those in your average animated fare. Change in his personality makes him much less one-dimensional that one might expect, although the film contains some of the expected falling-outs and reconciliations that are present in all such films, like the Shrek series and Pixar's filmography.
In addition to the positives though, the animation is great to look at (smooth 'n' shiny), and all the characters are very nicely-designed, being suitably cartoony (see above). The Minions are a hilarious creation, and are the focus of some really fun scenes. Being small, cute alien creatures, there was a risk that they'd be exploited within the film and be over-used, becoming more prominent than the actual lead characters, but thankfully this is not the case. A good balance is met. I wish we could have seen some more humour from Russell Brand's character though.
Despicable Me stood out amongst the other lazily-produced animated films made for the sake of money, because it was actually worthwhile: delightful, upbeat, and held together by its distinguished charm.
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