The Plot. This is a story about a villain, Gru, who starts to get worried about being old and that he is being replaced by younger villains who can do worse things as one of his rivals steals one of the Giza pyramids. He then comes up with a plan to use a shrinker to shrink and steal the moon, which would grant him the name of the ultimate super-villain. While stealing the shrinker his rival, Vector, steals the shrinker instead. Gru is trying to get into Vector's fortress, but it would seem that the only people who get in are three little orphan girls who sell cookies. Gru then decides to adopt the three girls to get access to the shrinker.
General thoughts. This is a funny and sweet family animation. While having quite a predictable plot, it focuses on the emotions and humor and it does a great job on the humor part.
Gru has a group of little yellow minions to help him with his evil deeds and also an old genius Dr. Nefario. The minions are the main thing that make this animation worth the time. They are purposely made very cute and funny, they speak funny and some of them have some weird additional features, like for example, one of them functions as a glow-stick at one point. It's unclear as to if the minions are created by Dr. Nefario or Gru or hired to work for them. Since they seem to be quite willing in taking part in experiments and such, it'd make much more sense if they were built or bred, but at one point Gru discusses payment with the minions and at many instances they appear to have money of their own. Quite confusing.
A thing I wasn't too happy about was the voice-actor casting. Steve Carell played the part of Gru. While Gru was a large, villany fellow, he should have had a deeper, meaner voice, but Steve Carell's voice of Gru was more like an annoying skinny dude with a slight Russian accent. I get it, Russian sounds evil, but not when it's whiny like Carell's. The other larger role was Vector, voiced by Jason Segel. Now, Segel has a very recognizable voice, but for some reason I couldn't sense any of that. Almost as if it's been modified for the part. Since Vector is a skinny geeky kid and Segel's voice is the voice of a larger adult man, the modification does make sense. Anyway, I think they could have found more suitable voice actors for both parts.
All in all, I enjoyed this very much. Would I see it again? Unlikely, since while very funny and entertaining, it wasn't exactly special or noteworthy in any way. Except for the minions, I loved the minions.
I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys a funny and cute children's animation. Pretty standard, but good enough. Watch it for the minions.
6/10 Flogs
(1 extra Flog for minions)
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