Posted in: Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Review | Tagged: film, illumination, illumination entertainment, review. Despicable Me 3

'Despicable Me 3' Reviewed: Illumination Continues To Be Disappointingly Mediocre

Despicable Me 3 might draw in fans of the original and young kids but everyone else is stuck with a mediocre movie that doesn't try to be anything special.

Director: Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda, and Eric Guillon (co-director)
Summary: Gru meets his long-lost charming, cheerful, and more successful twin brother Dru who wants to team up with him for one last criminal heist.

To say that the Minions are popular would be a vast understatement. You can't go anywhere without those things turning up and kids just seem to love them. There are also plenty of adults that love them too but despite how popular they are nothing about them is very interesting. They had an entire movie built around them and now they have a large role in Despicable Me 3. That role turns out to be one of the problems that this movie has. You can feel the movie straining to come up with a reason to keep going back to the Minions and their little adventure. It's the definition of perfunctory and the bouncing back and forth just doesn't work. It makes the main story feel like it's jumping up and down frantically trying to grab the attention of its notoriously short attention span audience.

That might work in a longer movie or maybe something broken up into two shorts but as a full production these two stories are only barely connected. The problem is those aren't the only stories that are going on in this movie. We have Lucy (Kristen Wiig) learning how to be a Mom to the girls, we have Gru and Dru (Steve Carell x2) learning about each other and their past. We have Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker) and his evil scheme. There is so much going on that it's impossible for the movie to really focus on anything. So any potentially moving moments; Dru and Gru connecting or Lucy saving the girls by being a badass, are cut short because the movie didn't have a second to breathe.

Despicable Me 3 seems to think very little of its audience. Kids are not dumber versions of adults; they have a very unique way of looking at the world that isn't wrong it's just different. This movie seems to think more than five seconds focused on one thing and the kids will completely drift off. We've seen young kids make it through movies like Wonder Woman without losing focus. If the movie is engaging they will focus on it. The kids in the audience aren't going to notice all of this but the adults certainly will. They will also notice a large amount of humor regarding the 1980's that feels like it was there to give them something to laugh at and is instead cringe inducing.

Despicable Me 3 is a kids movie through and through. It's crazy and funny enough for the little ones to enjoy and see more of the Minions but it doesn't aspire to be anything else. It exists to sell more toys and occupy 90 minutes of someone's time which is a shame because it plays around with some concepts that could be really moving. The target audience of kids will love it but parents will likely spend the time letting their minds wander.

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