Friday, July 14, 2017

Despicable Me 3 - When Gru Meets his Long Lost Twin!

It was a bit late for Indonesians to enjoy this movie as when it premiered in the US, we were in the period of hiatus from Hollywood movies due to the Eid Al-Fitr holiday for 1 whole week. Nevertheless, a week late is better than few months late or even over a year like movies such as The Whole Truth or The Neighbor. Although to be fair those movies were not exactly blockbuster materials. Anyway, I was unable to see it on Wednesday due to my office was having foreign guest whom I had to accompany. So my wife and I only saw this film last night. Well let us get on to the movie then.

Brief Story Line

After the events from Despicable Me 2, Gru (Steve Carell - The 40 Year Old Virgin, The Office TV series etc) and Lucy (Kristen Wiig - Ghostbusters 2016 version, Bridesmaids etc) were already married and became a couple of agents in the Anti-Villain League. During a heist of the largest diamond in the world by Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker - Co-creator and voice actor in South Park TV series) on the ship in the middle of ocean, Gru and Lucy were the nearest agents on location and tried to capture him. Gru was able to save the diamond but Balthazar managed to escape.

As Gru and Lucy were feeling down since they were blamed due to Balthazar's escape, they got an invitation to meet up with Gru's long lost twin named Dru (also voiced by Gru). So Gru, Lucy with their three adoptive daughters, Margo the eldest one (Miranda Cosgrove - Drake & Josh TV series and iCarly TV series), Edith the middle one (Dana Gaier) and the cutest youngest one Agnes (Nev Scharrel) went to the country called Freedonia. Apparently Dru was a very rich person and lived in a very big house with lots of cars and even helicopter which made Gru a bit jealous and less confident, especially Dru having thick blonde hair unlike Gru who was completely bald.

Meanwhile the minions who felt that Gru was turning to be a family man rather than the super villain he used to be, urged Gru to be bad again, especially Mel the one eyed minion. When Gru rejected this request, Mel and the rest of the minions decided to leave Gru and try to find their way to become bad again. Only two minions left to "serve" Gru and they also joined the family to Freedonia. On the other hand, Balthazar who was actually a big 1980s short-lived child sensation had big plans to avenge Hollywood producers who had cancelled his TV show which would involve the big diamond.

So how come Gru did not know about his twin brother? Could Gru and Dru become good brothers? Could Balthazar be captured and would the minions return to Gru? Find them all in this lovely colorful family movie.

End of Brief Story Line

After watching the first 2 Despicable Me movies + 1 Minions movie, I have grown accustomed to those funny yellow "boys" and also the cute adoptive girls of Gru. So this time around when they added the twin brother, at first I thought the story was a bit forced. But as the story continues, Dru character actually grew on me and it was lovely to see how the relationship between Gru and Dru evolved. 

In this 3rd movie, the focus was on this relationship and also on the 3 daughters especially on Agnes. I think she got a rather large screen time compared to the 1st and 2nd movie. It was actually a pretty good move cause who would not love to see such a cute girl with very big eyes and still believed in unicorn? I truly loved the moment of her when talking to Gru in bed and also when she was having a garage sale which was very cute and lovely. However, the minions in this movie was not having as much screen time as the previous two. Though there were still few scenes which would always be crazily amusing when involving them. There was also some nice relationship scene involving Lucy as the "new mother" of the girls.

The pictures in this movie were very colorful which would spoil the eyes of the younger audience and the story was not really complicated that would make them having difficulty to understand. As a family friendly movie, I think this one did not have a lot of violence, not even during the last "fight" scene. So parents need not worry too much for their children to see. And for the more mature audience, this one also quite entertaining (I heard a lot of them laughing hardly in some scenes). The movie was originally made in 3D animated but my wife and I wanted to see the 2D version instead so I could not share the 3D experience (I did not notice too many of scenes that would have greater impact in 3D anyway). 

Now since Balthazar was told to be star of 80s, the songs that were played by him through cassette recorder and songs involving him were all 1980s songs sung by Michael Jackson, Madonna and many others which was very enjoyable to me (yes, I am a big fan of those 80s songs which I loved more than 90s songs). One other thing to take note was that it did not have a post-credit scene. Just some amusing scenes involving Gru and Dru in cartoon mode during the earlier part.

Finally, my conclusion is that the movie was definitely entertaining. You got funny cute children stealing the show, some crazy funny minions, brothers relationship even mother daughter relationship in 1 movie, which was quite amazing. Even my wife was enjoying herself and was completely absorbed during the whole movie that she did not looked at her handphone at all. So if you happen to look for a funny interesting family movie and a sequel to those successful movies, then this one should be really good to see. Heads up that this is supposed to be the last time Steve Carell would voice the role of Gru. But if you are more interested in very deep heavy animated movies that would bring out all emotions like in Disney Pixar movies, then this one would be totally light compared to those. The choice is yours.

Happy watching!

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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