DESPICABLE ME (Rated PG for some mild rude humor & action): An exceptionally evil man, Gru (voice of Steve Carell), suffering from lack of parental love, plans to fortify himself with all manner of scientific & technical gadgets to carry off the most evil act of all: to steal the moon. He has some opposition from Vector (voice of Jason Segel), second most evil man working to beat Gru to the draw. They are opposed by a trio of sugar-sweet orphan girls who only see love (and a possible daddy) in Gru and eventually teach him how to love.
Ugh, yes; it's that Pixar & Dreamworks technique that succeeds so well for those two animation studios, but that cannot work when the trappings are so insincerely visible from a team of Carell, Segel and many of the production crew from Universal Studios who have made their niche by lowering comedies to the smugly in-your-face style; they lack the genuine philosophical ability to accomplish what the others do so convincingly.
The design is creative, even imaginative, beginning with proof that some evil person has stolen the Great Pyramid of Gisa, then off to Gru's ambition to become top evil banana. Pace is constantly frenetic, the comic lines shot out in what has become traditional bullet delivery - you've heard it in those other "funny" movies created by Apatow & others of his ilk. Clever at first, now tiresomely, smugly familiar.
Carell is the comic of the day - versatile & rubber faced, visually funny - but here, for some odd reason, he adopts a nasal Alan Arkin quality as his persona, which works well for Arkin, but weakens Carell - my personal bias, perhaps?
The movie is sporadically very inventive & entertaining, but when it sinks to imitation with hopes of greater profits - well, that dampened the fun for me. (Seems duplicitous imitation works, though - at least in a summer of mediocrity at the movies. It caught the ring; latest ratings show it to be #1 at the box office this week.)
If one ignores the motivation behind it and takes pleasure in its seemingly thoughtful message & cleverly inventive visuals, the film can be enjoyed - for what its worth - 95-minutes of smart animated diversion. (Grade: B+)
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