Despicable Me 2 - Something's Missing

This summer (and probably most summers to come) has been and will continue to be full of sequels:  Iron Man 3, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Monsters University, Red 2, The Wolverine, and Despicable Me 2 are all movies that I’ve seen or will be seeing this summer that involve returning characters and universes.  I’ve already written about Iron Man 3 and Star Trek: Into Darkness, both of which were really good sequels (yes, time and distance have made me fonder of IM3.)  I haven’t written about it yet, but I also thought that Monsters University was done very well.

That brings me to Despicable Me 2 (hereafter referred to as “DM2”).  Over all, I thought it was a cute story with a decent (not too overt) message.  The character designs were fun to look at.  The voice acting was well done.  The minions were hilarious!  But some of the elements that I enjoyed about the first movie were missing from this one.

First off, there was a distinct lack of inventing and building in DM2.  Gru still had gadgets, but they didn’t seem very original, and anything that was new seemed rather basic.

Second, he wasn’t really competing with anyone.  This is probably a major reason for the dearth of new machines and plots on Gru’s part.

Third, while the girls definitely had a role in this movie, they didn’t seem like they were as big a part of it as they were in the first one.

DM2 was definitely a sequel in that it didn’t spend much time re-introducing characters.  It was a stand-alone story, not depending on the first movie for anything except the characters themselves.  In that regard, I would suggest watching (or re-watching) the first movie before going to see DM2.  On the other hand, I’d only seen Despicable Me once, but I had no trouble stepping back into the world of Gru and company.

For me, a lot of what makes an animated movie enjoyable is the look of it.  I’m not all that fond of the designs in DreamWorks movies because all of the characters look the same to me.  Pixar does it right, though, with a seemingly endless variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and textures.  DM and DM2 were done by a company called Illumination Entertainment (part of Universal Studios), and they have taken a page from Pixar’s book.  I am especially impressed with the minions.  I mean, really, how many ways can you make yellow cylinders with arms, legs, eyes, a few hairs each, and mouths different?  And they all dress the same (for the most part), too!  And yet, if you pay attention, each minion is unique.  That’s impressive to me.

So while I didn’t enjoy DM2 quite as much as the original, it was still worth a watch.

(I’m starting to wonder if the length of my reviews reflects how strongly I feel about a movie…)