MOVIE REVIEW: DESPICABLE ME

DESPICABLE ME

Five of Seven Cows

As is always the case when an animated movie is my only theatrical choice, I went to Despicable Me with head slung low, feet dragging, and a contemptuous grumble just under my breath. Having emerged from a long-arrested development in my early forties, and with no children of my own, I consider animated movies to be for kids and therefore beneath me. Since that makes for a grand total of three things that I consider beneath me, it is a prejudice that I’m loathe to surrender.

             

Despicable Me is the tale of a moderately successful arch-villain who’s ambition to be the world’s greatest leads him to adopt three orphan girls. The girls charm him, as anyone that’s ever seen anything, ever, would have guessed, and by the end of the movie he is transformed into an arch-good guy. Again, no surprise there. The fact that the basic premise is so formulaic does make it a bit of a surprise that this is a very, very good movie.

          

I am not a student of animated movies – as stated earlier, I hold them in contempt as I am a big boy now and they are beneath me – but Despicable Me reminds me of some of the foreign cartoons I’ve seen. The opening few minutes, which are void of dialog, especially remind me of The Triplets of Belleville, a truly hilarious French film that I could only recall with the aid of Wikipedia.

            

 Steve Carell, Russell Brand, and even Julie Andrews lead the cast of voices, a fact that makes no impact on any aspect of the movie other than its budget. That is an idiotic waste of money in my estimation, but easily the greatest waste is the amount paid to some guy named Pharell Williams for the theme song of the same name. I’m not a fan of rap, or hip-hop, or whatever – I think as a genre it’s largely moronic and have heard very little that has ever made me want to reconsider that opinion.  But this, this has got to be the most annoying, imbecilic thing recorded at least since that abomination known as Achy Breaky Heart.

             

Many of the most inventive, clever and fresh movies I’ve seen in the last ten years have been animated, and yet I still resist seeing them. I imagine there are many men that feel the same way, and that’s a shame. I give Despicable Me five belly-laughing cows.