Director: Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud
Cast: Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Will Arnett, Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Elsie Fisher, Kristen Wiig
Rating: ***
He looks like Uncle Fester with a beak nose, and speaks with a Russian villain accent. He bursts a kid’s balloon, and pretends to be a recorded voice when girls from an orphanage ring the bell to sell cookies. That apart, bad guy Gru isn’t all that bad. Plus, he’s got one hell of a flame-exhausting ride (take that, Batman) and totes a freeze gun.
And if Batman were indeed the epitome of cool, this guy’s got a cool(er) underground lair where Pacman-like, gibberish-talking minions do his bidding. Movies with Steve Carell (or even just his voice) seem to be incomplete without a spy or a 007 angle. So there’s a balding, hard-of-hearing version of the scientist who invents cookie robots and fart guns (when asked for a dart gun, that is).
But there are no out and out bad people in a kids’ movie, so Gru must be transformed. By the same three orphans who came to sell him cookies. He adopts them so he can sneak in his cookie robots to steal a shrink ray from his rival, Vector, the gennext nerd-turned challenger to the throne of the top villain in the world.
Gru’s ultimate plan for the greatest crime ever: steal the moon. So he builds a rocket in his basement (one up on Tony Stark this time), flies to space, shrinks the moon and brings it back. Easy as you like it.
Along the way, the girls work their magic on him, he grudgingly plays parent to them, and discovers he’s pretty good at it. There are enough good laughs to make the film work for you as well as the kids – while a visit to the amusement park gives the CGI team the perfect opportunity to show off their 3D skills (remember, this is neither Pixar nor Disney).
I must say though, I would rather have paid to see the movie in 2D than watch a dimmer screen while wearing silly 25-rupee paper glasses.
-Sarit Ray
This review was originally written for gqindia.com (Click here to see...)
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