Despicable Me 3 (2017)

Just when you thought they couldn't milk this franchise any further, we get a trilogy, as if it was obligatory (I actually think it is).

I have never understood why this franchise was even remotely popular. The first movie was reasonably passable capitalising on the now exhausted superhero genre. An evil super genius getting long in the tooth tries to remain relevant amongst the growing number of younger supervillains. And in the end the supervillain becomes the hero. Then came the sequel which simply went straight down the old supervillain versus superhero route. The supervillain from the first movie now essentially a superhero fighting crime. Now along comes the third movie which is clearly struggling for ideas.

It now turns out that old Gru (Steve Carell) has a long lost brother called Dru (ugh!!). Dru of course looks identical to Gru except he has hair, he is also voiced by Carell. Dru is a budding supervillain and dreams of working with his infamous super genius brother. Problem is Gru is now a superhero and can't find a way to break this to his brother. So in the long run Gru ends up tricking Dru into helping him take down a problematic supervillain called Balthazar Brat (Trey Parker). Gru does this by pretending they are actually carrying out an evil plan. But anyway, yes they drag up the old long lost relation plot angle to keep this nonsense going. I really don't need to explain how lame this is do I?

Right so we already know Gru, his wife Lucy and their kids. So what about Dru, what's he like? Well like I said he looks identical to Gru, except for his flowing blonde hair. His voice is fairly similar to Gru's because he's voiced by Carell, oh and he dresses in white...to counter Gru's black. So yeah...that's about as imaginative as it gets for that. But wait! There is actually a positive note here, and that's the new evil character of Balthazar Brat. This is mainly down to two simple reasons. Firstly he's voiced by Trey Parker who has that simple, yet amusing tone of voice that we all know and love from South Park. Really hard to pinpoint why his voice is so catchy because its generally pretty normal. I think its Parker's ability to sound so satirical and mocking in a relatively deadpan manner.

Secondly its because the character of Balthazar is stuck in the 80's. He's obsessed with the 80's, anything and everything to do with that era. Being an 80's gen bloke this of course appealed to me greatly and I enjoyed the various pop culture references. Admittedly most of the references, quips and visual gags weren't anything overly original. He dances to various classic 80's pop songs while he works and plays with various 80's toys and gadgets. He dresses in typical 80's fashions, he has a mullet, and his evil plan involves a giant robot or mech rampaging through Hollywood (in typical Godzilla or 80's Saturday morning cartoon type fashion). So whilst this character was indeed a totally unoriginal idea, for me he was fun to watch. Not overly sure how kids these days would quite get him though. I would of thought most of the references would go sailing over their heads.

Indeed its only when Balthazar is on the screen this movie is any fun. Most of the movie is filled with mind-numbing crapola showing Gru looking after his insufferable kids. Like the sub plot involving one of his daughters trying to find a unicorn...eh? Or the other daughter and her potential boyfriend...ugh! Or spending time with his brother and his supervillain inventions (like we haven't seen that kind of stuff before). As for the minions, hell they've been relegated to a sub plot also. You don't actually get that much minion screen time a tall really because they leave Gru after he refuses to return to villainy. Of course they return for the finale but overall they're in and out of the picture. Odd because I thought they were a cash cow.

I dunno, I just didn't get the point of this movie because it literally offered nothing new. Even the bad guy, who was enjoyable, was completely unoriginal in every aspect. Yes the movie looks great as all CGI animated movies do nowadays, so that's kinda inconsequential at the end of the day. The soundtrack is the usual god awful collection of hip-hop and rap which every kids movie has to incorporate it seems. Its not particularly funny and its not particularly exciting. The entire feature simply feels like a by the numbers production merely chugged out to try and squeeze the last few drops of money out before it inevitably dies. Well its dead alright.

4/10