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Have you ever wondered how super villains became super villains? It’s not when you are in high school and people ask you what you are going to be when you grow up you respond with: a super villain. They should make a movie about that, because I’m really curious how that works. Let’s take Scaramanga from The Man With The Golden Gun. Here’s this guy who own an entire island to himself. Now we all know that these remote location don’t need to be that expensive, as a couple of Hollywood movie stars own their own tropical islands but still how does this work? Do they go toe a realty agent with the request that they are interested in buying a remote island with the possibility to put a lair there? And these remote locations are always secret yet they always have a professional architectural design to them and are filled with high tech equipment. But I’m curious who did the construction of said lair. How do you keep that secret if there has to someone who installed the bathrooms? How did you get all the construction workers on the island, fly them in every day?
Gru is such a criminal mastermind but his lair is simply placed in an urban environment between two other houses. Though his Transylvanian styled house does stand out in the neighborhood. Since some new villain stole an Egyptian pyramid Gru has to come up with a new master plan to become the #1 villain again. To do so he needs the aid of three little orphans which he adopts. They function as an aid to get into his competition’s lair and steal a shrink ray, a device he needs to steal the moon and become the #1 villain once more.
But Gru becomes attached to the orphans and slowly develops a paternal instinct.
Somehow to me the characters never came really to life. The voice work was good, but Gru is a character I never felt any sympathy for. Also the way they designed him could have been better, this was a two dimensional super villain in a movie that requires a third one.
The movie is saved by a fast paced script that has a lot of physical jokes which reminded me of a Road Runner cartoon. It has some good jokes in it, one which featured The Bank Of Evil and the way it was known previously. It features some insight into the daily life of a criminal mastermind but still fails to explain who does the constructing on those remote islands.
I really would like to know.
