I’m definitely over this ridiculous fad for 3D. I’m also over the Pixar-induced infatuation Hollywood seems to have with animated ‘kidult” movies: predictably enough, even as the digital wizardry has continually popped eyes, story lines have proved ever more derivative, and great films, digital, 3D, or otherwise remain as elusive as ever. Most the recent digital cartoons including (universally feted but, in my contrarian opinion, overrated) Toy story 3 have been duds. So I had no great expectations of Despicable Me, particularly as its tag line (“superbad. Superdad”) promised a dreary couple of hours.
The first thing you notice about the film – or perhaps the last, seeing as it is only with the rolling of the credits that you realise what has caused this odd dissonance – is how French it is. Other than the voice actors, virtually every name on the credit roll is French.
And that gives it, well, a je ne sais quoi (he says with a “pfft” and a Gallic shrug). Gru, the master villain, wears the sort of stylish scarf and a snappy zip-up turtle-neck that would simply never occur to a Californian. His house is a decaying Gothic mansion with a dead lawn, but live suburban Californian neighbours (no South Pacific atolls for this major criminal, but his inside space is still cavernous to say the least). Gru drives an ungainly rocket-powered car made of riveted steel that might be of Jules Verne’s devising. And Gru – sardonic, ironic, eastern European Gru – is the hero of the film, not the villain: in tune with the modern world’s acknowledgement that there is no good and bad, only 1001 different flavours of turpitude, Gru’s quest is nothing more honourable than reclaiming the world’s number 1 bad guy spot off some precocious young kid in a tracksuit.
So a word about allegories. I have seen a couple bandied about in cyber space, that this is a thinly disguised biopic about Microsoft and Apple – for said track suited adolescent “Vector”, superimpose Bill Gates. And Vector certainly seems to have outdone the older, more complacent Gru, in every conceivable way (whilst being obsessed with a Squid Gun!). Yet, with Microsoft these days more or less an also-ran in the tech wars, it’s difficult to see why this would be an interesting subject to explore. And it might jut as well be about Google versus Microsoft, or even Universal versus Pixar. But you do have a hunch that the Frenchmen are hinting at something darker than the nostalgic slapstick of, say, The Incredibles. There is something about this film’s bearing that leads you (well, it led me, at any rate) to look for buried messages.
As is the way of these post-modern comedies, the cultural references are legion, and the story itself is an imaginative (or perhaps random) welding together of Little Orphan Annie, Moonraker, The Incredibles and, in its way, Wall Street: Gru’s problems only start when he is turned down by his bankers for a loan to finance his latest dastardly enterprise. His bank: The Bank of Evil, of course. (Subtitled: “Formerly Lehman Brothers”).
What looked like a cheap shot had me thinking allegorically again (sorry: it’s a weakness). I wonder whether it isn’t technology, but capitalism itself, that is the Frenchmen’s target. Something chimes about the parallels between the corporate and banking excesses of recent years which, as we remorsefully rehearse, sorely lacked social utility outside the enrichment of their perpetrators – and a hubristic and egotistical race to do something as pointless (and self-harming, as a poor werewolf discovers, mid-howl) as stealing the moon. The only motivation offered was “profit”, with no explanation given for how any might accrue (which also rings rather true!)
Certainly, the speech Gru gives to all his “minions” (semi-sentient little helpers who look like Advil capsules in goggles and denim overalls: he tells them to prepare their CVs) resembles Dick Fuld’s supposed speech to his defeated troops after the battle of wall street in 2008, and the minions (half-witted automatons) do rather resemble aspiring investment bankers. The Lehman reference, perhaps, was not coincidental.
So much for hubris: Gru’s redemption is at the hands of three orphans whom he adopts for nefarious purposes, and in whose hands he makes his moral recovery. This is predictable, yes, and formulaic, yes, but nevertheless is handled deftly, with genuine inventiveness and the same sort of new parent’s knowingness which infuses Pixar’s output: Gru’s irritation at the feebleness of the bedtime story he is required to read was visceral and very, very familiar to the audience, judging by their uproarious response. Brilliant.
The 3D is used inventively (why no-one has ever thought to stage a rollercoaster ride in a 3D movie before is beyond me, but it works a treat) without ever being gratuitous. And I liked the incidental music too: other than the opening strains of Lynrd Skynrd (accompanying a stereotypically annoying family of American tourists: again, a deft little Gallic tweak) it is suave and, well, Continental.
Others have carped that Despicable Me is saccharine: maybe it caught me on a good day but I didn’t think so at all: I enjoyed every minute, and so did my kids (9 through 4), so from me it comes well recommended for all ages.
Despicable Me hits UK cinemas 15th October.
Directors: Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud
Cast: Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig
Runtime: 95 min
Country: USA
Film Rating: 
