Despicable Me 3 Review

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An overstuffed sequel that still manages to find room for just enough charm and humor.

By Alex Welch

The negative reception to 2015’s Minions movie looms large over this year’s Despicable Me 3, so it might not come as much of a surprise to hear that the film itself is a jumble of strong and weak points. By the time Despicable Me 3 comes to an end the franchise has officially worn out its welcome once and for all. But the good news is that the film features such a vibrantly stylish adventure that it keeps that negative feeling from becoming too overwhelming until the credits finally roll.

There was something new and fresh about the entire world and characters of Despicable Me when it first arrived on the scene in 2010. Then Universal released Despicable Me 2 in 2013, which saw Steve Carell’s Gru pairing up romantically with Kristen Wiig’s Lucy and officially transitioning from being a supervillain to a professional agent of good. And while Despicable Me 2 was funny enough to be a worthy sequel to its superior predecessor, it was the Minions spin-off in 2015 where it first began to feel like the shiny candy coating covering all of the Despicable Me world was beginning to wear irritatingly thin.

Despicable Me 3 follows Gru as both he and Lucy are fired from their jobs, sending their lives into uncertain territory until Gru receives a message from his previously unknown twin brother, Dru (also voiced by Carell), who wishes to establish a relationship with his long-lost sibling. However, Dru’s secret agenda leads to an opportunity for Gru to seek vengeance on Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker), the world-famous child-actor-turned-supervillain who caused Gru to be fired in the first place.

Now, if that plot synopsis makes it sound like Despicable Me 3 may be combining two very different movies into one, that’s because it’s exactly what it does. Despicable Me 3 is arguably one of the more overstuffed animated films to come around in quite some time, which keeps it from ever really finding a suitable groove or coherent structure at any point throughout.

That’s because, in addition to the drama surrounding Gru, Dru, and Balthazar, Despicable Me 3 decides to dedicate unreasonably long periods of time on various subplots: Lucy becoming a better mother to Gru’s daughters; Agnes (Nev Scharrel) going on a wild hunt to find a real unicorn; and the Minions abandoning Gru to pursue their own villainous interests. The existence of those subplots might not be quite so damaging if it wasn’t for the fact that none of them ever really affect or tie into the main storylines that drive the film. They are there for padding to make sure Despicable Me 3 has at least a 90-minute runtime.

It’s especially frustrating considering just how entertaining the confrontations are between Parker’s Balthazar and Carell’s Gru are. Since both are arrogant and foolhardy villains in their own right, they bounce off of each other to great, often hilarious effect, while Balthazar’s obsession with the 1980s leads to many action sequences set to music from Michael Jackson to A-ha. This aspect of the character particularly shines in the funny and exciting opening sequence that the rest of Despicable Me 3 has a hard time living up to it. Now, granted, the ‘80s music is a cheap way to make sure the film maintains a certain amount of momentum, but that doesn’t take away from how legitimately entertaining it is to watch Balthazar engage in multiple “dance fights” with Gru.

So it’s through Balthazar and a number of side-sequences involving the Minions that Despicable Me 3 maintains the witty and hilarious sense of humor that made the first two films such big hits. Those moments manage to always lift the film up, even when it looks like it’ll just be dragged down again by another unnecessary interaction between Gru and Dru (a character who is as annoying and charmless as he seems on paper), or another superfluous example of how much Lucy is struggling to be a mother.

But instead of focusing on just one simple conflict between Gru and Balthazar, Despicable Me 3 goes off on multiple, increasingly mundane tangents that can’t help but make the overall storyline involving Balthazar feel like a missed opportunity in the end. The same goes for a majority of the film, which tries to be too much all at once and winds up feeling like the least substantial of the Despicable Me films as a result.

Despicable Me 3

The Verdict

Thanks to the charming nature of the characters and their genuine good heartedness, Despicable Me 3 manages to be an entertaining enough film to feel like a decent continuation of the previous two chapters. But the hollow sweetness at the center of it likely won’t leave many wanting another Despicable Me adventure anytime soon.

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