Fan Review: 'Despicable Me 2'
Posted Tuesday, July 2, 2013 at 4:35 PM Central
by John Couture
Hey everyone, I'm back. I know that Tim has been manning the news and the day-to-day of the site the last few days, but I had to deal with a water issue at my house. Let me just say that I don't wish a water issue upon my worst enemy.
It's not often these days that Tim or I are able to get out to theaters to see films while they are released, let alone before they hit theaters. That's just the reality of having young kids in the house. So, when we got a review of Despicable Me 2 from our fan Harry with his blessing to post it on the site, we were intrigued.
It also helps that I really enjoyed the first film and was pretty psyched about this sequel. I don't know if we'll make this a regular feature on the site, but if you all enjoy it, you never know, perhaps we'll post other fan reviews in the future.
Sit back and enjoy this fairly positive review from reader Harry E. I'm pretty excited that the Minions feature more prominently in this film and I can't help but think that will explode even further when they star in their own film Minions next year.
Despicable Me 2
I too, like the guys of this website have been lacking in my movie going as of late, but when a friend of mine got tickets to an early screening of Despicable Me 2, I jumped at the chance to go. While I am a big fan of animated films, and while I like the first Despicable Me, it was definitely not on my top 10 animated films list. And in fact, while I enjoyed it, I was not that impressed. The sequel on the other hand was terrific, and may fall into that rare category of the sequel being better that the original movie.
Unlike the first movie which was, for the most part, solely based on Gru and his woes and plot to steal the moon, with only touches from the Minions and touches of the parental theme with the 3 girls; this movie has a little bit of everything and is well constructed and well balanced. (That being said, at one point I was thinking to myself how much longer can this go on. But in the end it was worth it. (The run time is only 98 minutes.)) There is of course a storyline about being an evil villain and that sort of thing, but then it is balanced by a few other plot lines like.... SPOILER ALERT... young love, a love interest for Gru, more and a better parental theme, and of course, the Minions. The Minions are used much more successfully in this movie. They are still just as cute and goofy as in the first movie but they are also used to spoof pop culture references which are funny for the parents and/or older crowd that will see this movie. The Minions also are a vital part of the story this time around.
The free movie that I got to see was in 3D and they definitely were aware of this when making the movie. There are some 3D effects that felt forced but for the most part they were good effects. During the credits the Minions go crazy with a built for 3D skit.
The one thing I did notice is how much violence there was in the movie. I know that it’s an animated movie, but for all of the ridiculous fart jokes and really little kid jokes there were in the movie, there seemed to be a lot of violence to me. I would not want my kid coming home and copying some of the things in this movie.
All in all I’d definitely recommend it, it is hilarious as well as an engaging story that everyone can find something to relate to. It’s no Pixar but it’s a good movie. Despicable Me 2 comes out a week from today [Tomorrow. Sadly, the water damage delayed my posting of this report.-John] and I’d recommend going to see it.