Despicable Me

"Now, the rest of the plan is simple. I fly to the moon. I shrink the moon. I grab the moon. I sit on the toilet."

Any animated movie that was released during 2010 is inevitably going to be compared to Toy Story 3, so let's get that out of the way, first. No, Despicable Me is not "better" than Toy Story 3. On an emotional and story-telling level, it's not nearly as profound or involving. But Despicable Me isn't trying to be profound, it's aiming for amusement and entertainment. And on those two fronts, Dreamworks has a definite success on their hands.

My favorite thing about Despicable Me is how humorous it is. This is seriously the funniest animated movie that I've seen in quite a while. It has the expected amount of jokes that will give kids (and older people, too) the giggles, as well as lots of comedy that only the grown-up crowd will appreciate. It's fun to see what will pop up next (keep your eyes open for a particularly amusing reference to a particularly un-amusing scene in The Godfather).

Despicable Me is also a vivid, bright movie that's pleasing to the eye in all the right ways. The character designs are stylized and fun, the soundtrack is a nice change of pace for this kind of film, and the pacing is excellent, with nary a dull stretch. The voice talent is great, but I will admit that most of them were pretty much unrecognizable. I wouldn't have known that Jason Segel, Kristin Wiig, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, or Will Arnett were even involved, if not for the credits and the fact that I had read about them beforehand. Steve Carell and Jack McBrayer (in a small but hilarious part) are really the only voices that are easily recognizable. That's not a criticism, just an observation. 

So yeah, it's pretty clear that I liked this movie a lot. It reminds me most of Monsters, Inc. (a movie I absolutely love) in the way that it combines sweetness and humor in a manner that's never cloying or annoying. Watch it with your kids, watch it with your friends, watch it with your significant other, or watch it by yourself. You'll laugh, you'll cheer, you'll say "awwww", and you'll fall in love with Agnes, Edith, and Margo even faster than Gru does.