![]() The antagonist himself, though flamboyant enough, doesn’t hold a candle to Vector in the original. After a pretty inspired opening involving the theft of an entire Arctic research laboratory, the new archvillain’s actual plot of world domination is a bit of a letdown, even when you find out how he plans to do it. The charming gee-whiz quality of the original, with dueling archvillains and high-concept, attention-grabbing crimes like stealing the Great Pyramid of Giza and even the moon itself, is lessened. I would have liked to see Gru and Lucy used more effectively as a team (and having Lucy bail Gru out of a bad blind date by shooting the obnoxious woman with a tranquilizer gun isn’t exactly what I had in mind). She’s a good match for Gru, and while she gets the better of him in their first encounter, for once a family film avoids the tiresome cliché of the leading lady being more competent, smarter and better in every way than the leading man.īy the end, in fact, we’re in traditional damsel-in-distress rescue territory, which is really too far in the other direction. Kristen Wiig, wasted in the original as the Miss Hannigan-ish head of the orphanage, is recast in a much better role as an overenthusiastic AVL agent named Lucy Wilde. Like the penguins of Madagascar, the Minions are destined for their own film, as an end-credits audition sequence indicates. The yellow Minions, so popular in the original, are the clear breakout characters, and the movie overuses them shamelessly, to audience-pleasing effect. Steve Carell is still amusing as brusque, testy Gru, no longer evil but still off-kilter enough to keep things entertaining. (Oh, how Mike Myers has influenced this discussion!) Evil into Austin Powers ( mutatis mutandis, for a family film) is the best possible way to keep the reformed character from losing his mojo. Evil without Austin Powers,” I called Gru in my review of Despicable Me. This is an inspired idea - the film’s best. And then there’s the AVL - that’s the Anti-Villain League - a high-tech intelligence organization that wants to recruit Gru to help thwart other archvillains, like a reformed computer hacker going into computer security and thwarting other hackers. There’s a nice tribute to motherhood, though the movie never gets past the Hallmark sentiment to developing actual relationships. Well, moppets need a mother as well as a father - and it’s pretty clear that Gru’s little girls know it, even if Gru doesn’t. ![]() Then there are the neighbors trying to set up Gru with their single lady friends.
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