Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Despicable Me 3 (2017)

This is topic Despicable Me 3 (2017) in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=4;t=002279

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-07-2017, 08:49 PM:

This movie is a bit of a mess, for the simple reason that it lost track of it's title.

There's nothing despicable about anybody in the movie, except the bad guy of course, but that's dumb, because EVERY cartoon bad guy is despicable, and the hook of this series is supposed to be that the GOOD GUY is despicable.

I still remember the cool feeling of "oh, this is going to be good" when the opening sequence of the first DM movie ran. Gru was a particularly appealing "bad good guy" and it was a refreshing twist. Turning him into a bit of a wimp/dad figure sort of undermines the whole concept and takes most of the fun out of the proceedings.

The other problem is, the supporting cast is shoehorned in as if they were afterthoughts. They got rid of the coolest minor character from the previous films (Dr. Nefario) by "freezing him in carbonite," and the Minions, who must not be overexposed because they have their own franchise to worry about, are marginalized to the point they're almost in a differnt movie.

After a killer opening sequence that recalls a few classic James Bond films, Gru's wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig) is similarly sidelined for a good share of the proceedings.

The series' three adorable little girls, who continue to be adorable here, spend most of the movie looking for a unicorn, until they're needed for a kidnap plot in the last third of the movie. It is at this point when things finally begin to get interesting. Until then we're subjected to a lot of mugging by Steve Carell playing two characters (Gru and his twin brother Dru), and a lot of blather by Trey Parker, who is pretty much wasted as the least-funny bad guy in an animated comedy in quite some time.

I did enjoy the not-so-subtle dig at Disney's "Finding Nemo" in the opening sequence, when an obvious father-and-son pair of clownfish get swamped by Gru's speeding boat.

You can feel the lack of enthusiasm Universal had for this movie right in the onesheets, which are the most boring set of onesheets for a cartoon action adventure comedy movie I've ever seen.

It was a disappointment in a summer that's had quite a few of them, especially because it was the movie I was most looking forward to this summer. I would give it four out of five stars for the first 10 minutes and the last 20 minutes, but only one star for the middle hour of the movie, so an average of just under 2 stars.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 08-02-2017, 05:04 PM:

the movie was tonality all over the place, I liked the minions, but didn't like their stand alone movie, but they are so under utilized in this installment it's a disappointment