Despicable Me 2 Blu-ray Review
Brad Sturdivant
December 14th, 2013
Although I thought it was overrated, the first DESPICABLE ME managed to surpass expectations by telling a sweet story of a villain learning to love after adopting three orphan girls. But with the sequel, Gru is no longer a villain, he’s a loving father, more concerned about throwing a good birthday party than trying to take over the world. That presents some challenges for the sequel in terms of living up to expectations, but thankfully, the filmmakers knew they had an ace in the hole; minions. When you have characters as loved and as charming as the minions, you can get away with some deficiencies in other areas.
When a mysterious villain is holed up at the local shopping mall, the Anti-Villain League enlists the help of Gru to figure out the identity of the villain and how to stop them. So Gru teams up with AVL agent Lucy and together, they try to save the world from another evil villain. But Gru has some other issues to contend with. His oldest daughter has become infatuated with a boy who may or may not be the son of the villain and Gru himself is starting to fall in love with Lucy, providing distractions while they’re supposed to be protecting the world. Gru is no longer evil and I was surprised that the film didn’t address some of his past transgressions or make jokes about his struggles to be good after being bad for so long.
Given the situation, Gru helping out the AVL was the logical progression for the character and now that they’ve gone down this route, the possibilities are endless when it comes to sequels. Unfortunately, a good Gru just isn’t as interesting as an evil Gru. There’s not much that can be done about that, but the result is a boring, shallow character that created some long, dry spells during the film. I liked the joke when Gru claimed the boy her daughter was into was the villain and there were a few similarly funny gags throughout, but overall I struggled to stay invested in Gru or Lucy.
While the story is clearly subpar when compared to the original, the sequel heavily features the minions. Every supporting animated character must be cute, do lots of physical humor and have a funny voice. The minions have all of that in spades, so even though it’s obvious they were created to sell dolls, it’s impossible not to love them. The sequel does a great job of giving them a bigger role, but not so much that you get sick of them. And even if you start to tire of their antics, all is forgiven when you see them do a rendition of “I Swear” towards the end of the film. I’ve been singing their version so much that I don’t even remember the real words.
Fans of the original site the film’s heart and minions as the reason they loved it so much. The sequel doesn’t have half the heart of the original, but the good news is that it has twice the minions. The film is more than efficient to keep adults entertained and has plenty of easy gags to make it fun for kids.
DESPICABLE ME 2 BLU-RAY REVIEW
Video: DESPICABLE ME 2 looks fantastic on Blu-ray.
Audio: The audio was just as impressive.
Commentary with Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin: The directors give a decent commentary. It’s hard to do a commentary on a straight-forward animated sequel, but they talk about people’s love of the minions and some of the decisions they made on the film.
Deleted scene (:58): A single deleted scene featuring a young Gru.
Mini-Movies (19:53): Three animated shorts are included, all featuring the minions. You can’t get enough minions, so these were fun.
Gru’s Girls (26:03): The cast shows up to talk about Gru’s daughters, his transformation, the minions, the villain and the gadgets in the film. These are broken up into 6 featurettes.
Previews
[fbcomments]
