ofpsmith Review of Despicable Me 3

Despicable Me 3 (2017)

It's not terrible by any means but the series is starting to fade.

[6/10 · 12 July 2017]

It's a common curse with the third movie in most trilogies (assuming we don't count Minions.) The third movie is usually where it starts to wear off. Such is the case for Despicable Me 3. The movie is average. That's it. It's not great, it's not bad, it's just average. The story is that Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker), former 80s child actor turned super villain has eluded capture from Gru (Steve Carell) and Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig) for too long, and the new chief of the Anti Villain League isn't happy about it and fires them. Eager to get their jobs back Gru receives word that he has a long lost twin brother named Dru (Carell also) who invites him to his home in a country known as Freedonia (the same country that Groucho Marx ran in Duck Soup). Dru attempts to get Gru back into villainy. Gru manages to resist the urge for a whole 5 minutes. The master plan is to now steal a diamond from Bratt and hopefully be readmitted to the Anti Villain League. Along the way we have numerous sub plots involving Lucy trying to be a good mom, the Minions fed up with lack of crime and going to jail (it's never specified how that happens), Agnes (Nev Scharrel) wanting to find a unicorn after hearing a legend, Bratt wanting to destroy Hollywood in revenge for rejecting him as a teenager, and the relationship between Gru and Dru. In all honesty I think there's more plots than The Dark Knight Rises. This is really the biggest problem. A Despicable Me movie really doesn't need this many plot threads. Most of the time the movie just jumps around to each one and it comes off as being unfocused. Kids will probable be fine with it and it is enjoyable enough, but I don't think it's as good as the other three.