Random Movie Review - Despicable Me 3

Having had my rant about what Blue Sky do, it actually occurs to me that they have some things in common with Illumination Entertainment. They both have one franchise that they choose to keep making films of rather than do what Disney and DWA do and make a lot of original films with the occasional sequel or two. From those franchises that they milk big time, one of their characters is the studio's mascot. But after you do a couple of films, things start to go downhill when it comes to originality and ideas. They have both made the two least hated Dr. Seuss films so far. And they have each made a film that stays faithful to the source material (OK that one isn't technically true as Illumination are currently working on that particular film). In the case of Blue Sky, you got the Ice Age films with Scrat as their mascot. For Illumination, you got the Despicable Me films with the Minions as their mascot. Now I enjoy the Despicable Me films. I think they are great family comedies that seem to do more of the same in every film and everyone loves it. We're now at the fourth film in the franchise (seeing as Minions technically counts as the third film) and it has it all. Revelations, bad guys being cool, comedy in all shapes and sizes and of course, Minions. So let's be despicable as we dive into this film:

So this time, we have a number of storylines though all culminating in the final fight against the main villain, former child star turned world dominating supervillain Balthazar Bratt (voiced by South Park co-creator and the voice of Eric Cartman and half of the shows other characters, Trey Parker). In one storyline, Gru (reprised by Steve Carell) gets fired from the AVL (Anti-Villains League) and discovers that he has a brother (also voiced by Carell) who wants to get into the world of villainy which Gru chooses to do as a means to stop Bratt and get his job back. In another storyline, Lucy (reprised by Kristen Wiig) also gets fired from the AVL (alongside Gru for the same reasons) and decides to become a better mother and learns the way of motherhood with help from Margo (reprised by Miranda Cosgrove). In a third storyline, Edith (reprised by Dana Gaier) and Agnes (this time voiced by Nev Scharrel) lose the unicorn toy as a result of making money for the family, but soon find out about a so called real unicorn and set out to find it. And in the final storyline, all but two of the Minions (all reprised by Pierre Coffin) leave Gru after he chooses not to return to villainy and get themselves in all sorts of shenanigans.

Its a packed film that has a lot of storylines going for it. But despite the many storylines going on, they are not mismatched in anyway and actually do make sense. All I can say is that its just another film that doesn't really do much in the way of originality. I mean you have the world dominating villain (though Trey Parker does a very good job of the role he has) which has been done a billion times before. Family matters is another thing done before. But despite all of that, it's nice to see characters going out of their comfort zones such as Lucy being a mother, Gru being a villain again and the Minions becoming jailbirds (not a spoiler as such seeing as it's on the advertising) and surprisingly scary jailbirds at that. Its neither bad nor good, but you get your moneys worth and any fan of the last three films will no doubt enjoy this one too. 7/10