November 8, 2017 – The first Despicable Me cartoon was pretty good, but you know how it is these days. They just keep making sequels of something good until it stops making money. So don't expect this to stop anytime soon. “Despicable Me 3” cost about $80 million to make and it grossed over $1 billion worldwide.

To me, this franchise seems tired, but, as long as it is making money ... An overly complicated plot features a disgruntled and dangerous former child TV star, Balthazar Bratt, dumped from his kiddie show when he grows up. On his kiddie show, he was a supervillain, so he decides to become an adult supervillain in real life. His big plan is to get his revenge on Hollywood for canceling his old show.

Former supervillain Gru and his wife, Lucy, are busy raising their children. They have gone straight as spies specializing in combating supervillains. Gru gets fired from his spy agency job after thwarting a theft by Bratt, but failing to capture him. Lucy quits in protest.

You would think Gru would just go after Bratt and capture him to show his worth to the spy agency, and he does, but it takes him a long time to get around to it. Before we get to that, there is a long sequence in which Gru finds out he has a twin brother, Dru. Gru and his whole family go to meet Dru in a faraway land where some people still believe in unicorns. Gru's daughter, Agnes, hears a story about unicorns living in a local forest and is obsessed with finding one.

After Gru finds out about his family history, including details about his estranged, late, father, he and his brother, who wants to be a supervillain, decide to steal the world's biggest diamond. Gru does not tell his brother that the only reason he wants to steal the diamond from Bratt, is to get his old government job back. This leads to complications.

Meanwhile Gru's minions have quit in disgust after Gru lost his government job, and have ended up in prison, but they make a daring escape, meeting up with Gru and Dru just in the nick of time to help them fight Bratt, who is a very tough supervillain to defeat.

Quite a lot of this story has to do with family problems between Gru and his brother, and that whole business with the so-called unicorn. None of this is entirely convincing. A lot of it seems to be just marking time until the big showdown between Gru and Bratt. This film rates a C+.

Copyright © 2017 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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