Despicable Me 2 (2013)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This post spoils movie Despicable Me 2 (2013).

On paper Despicable Me was like my kind of movie. But I could watch it for ten or fifteen minutes. It just felt like complete waste of time and I hated how they wasted interesting premise. Back then I didn't have this blog. I was surprised when Minions started to appear everywhere before and after the release of the sequel. Minions are the best part of the movie. They deserve better movie. The second best part was cute kids. The two youngest ones. Everything else was average or overkill.

Movie expected me to know the first movie, which I didn't do. Gru had three daughters. Where they came from if he was so bad with women? Did he created them? If he had wife at any point, he would have got over school yard humiliation. One daughter tells how she doesn't have mother. It would have been nice to tell why she didn't have. Just few words somewhere.

Movie has too much distracting scenes, which paid off later in movie. When Dr Nefario leavse Gru, you can be sure he goes to work for main villain. When daughter asks Lucy if she is single, you can be sure Gru and Lucy will get together.  Even if you don't see these things miles away, they will be force fed to you. Gru tells Lucy how El Macho dies, that is how El Macho tries to kill Lucy in the end. Whole movie is full of these scenes. It doesn't focus on anything. It is just series of distracting scenes that pay off later.

Gru's oldest daughter falls in love with El Macho's son. This love story is full of clichés of how father doesn't want daughter to date boys. When Gru finds El Macho is the villain and leaves El Macho's party with his daughters, El Macho's son has broken Gru's daughter's heart. This made teen love story totally pointless. Why not have daughter not wanting to leave? You just wanted to give us teen love story clichés? Movie waste potential like this in many other things too. Wig shop owner was mix of several Bond villains. He was there only for moment. I would have like him to be old villain, who has left that life behind. He was just innocent. He could have been innocent former villain.

When ever movie starts to feel interesting, it gives us overkill or random distracting scene. After a while you stop caring. Main plot was interesting, as was what they started with wig shop owner. Concentrating on those and adding minions and daughter to them would have been interesting. Instead we got extra plots of Gru's dating life and teen romance and youngest daughter's mother poem. Minions had best moments like YMCA performance. It sounded like Haado Gei's version of the song. It would have been cool if they used Haado Gei's Japanese lyrics instead of  Japanese sounding nonsense. I don't know what Haado Gei sings in his version. That could have been too offensive for this kind of movie.

What annoys me the most is all the wasted potential. Gru, daughters and minions created working combination. Concentration and toning down would have made this great movie. All minion stuff would have worked with ten or so minions. It would have been more believable. El Macho would have worked as over the top macho, but we got that in steroids and volume turned to 20. Movie is not all bad. It just turn incredible ingredients into average movie.  Just made me wonder what the team of The Incredibles would have done with this.

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