Introducing a likable cartoon villain and his iconic, adorable sidekick, Despicable Me birthed a new franchise for Illumination. Gru (Steve Carell) is a villainous character who pops balloons in front of kids and uses his freeze ray to cut in line at the coffee shop. His ultimate plan is to steal the moon using a rocket ship and a shrink ray. With the help of his little yellow minions and the inventor Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand), he can manage most of the work but would still need a loan from the Bank of Evil. Gru has a hard time living up to the villain standard and disappoints his mother (Julie Andrews). When a new villain Vector (Jason Segel) and steals a pyramid, Gru finds it harder to impress the banker Mr. Perkins (Will Arnett) and receive a loan for his rocket.A group of orphan girl Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Elsie Fisher) try to sell Gru cookies but he pretends to be a recording. Gru must first steal a shrink ray but when he does, he finds that Vector is one step ahead of him. The only way for Gru to get inside Vector's lair and past all of the booby traps is to adopt the orphans and send them in with robotic cookies. He finds that having three girls in his house turns out to be more difficult than he thought as they terrify his dog-like creature, goof around with the minions, and touch all of his villainous equipment. He does manage to steal the shrink ray from Vector but has to take the girls to their dance class first.Check out more of this review and others at swilliky.com

Despicable It was a surprise to me in the year it was released, it looked like it would be a regular animation, but in the end it proved to be very good, and one of the best films of 2010, with a great voice cast, Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russel Brand, Julie Andrews, Will Arnet and etc, and a good direction by duo Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin, the animation is very well done, the soundtrack is cool, and the characters are very charismatic, Gru and the kids are my movie favorites, Minions have people who like them, but I particularly can not stand them, the script has some glide, not all the jokes works, I could not like the Minions, even though they have some cool moments, and the animation loses a little strength in the 3 act, Despicable Me has 1 and 2 very good act, and a 3 of ups and downs, is a very good animation, I recommend. Note 8.0

Animated films often prove to be real guilty pleasures for me. This was one I had been wanting to see for a long time but have only just got round to it. It met all my expectations - the animation is great, the characters are great, and it's easy to see why it satisfied audiences of all ages and not just kids.However, drawing comparisons to other animated movies, 'Despicable Me' isn't one I'll revisit in a hurry. Not because I didn't enjoy it, but because it lacks that special something that makes the very best animated movies memorable and timeless.I expected 'Despicable Me' to entertain and it certainly did. It's funny, action packed and all round good fun, but falls short compared to others of its kind.

At a time when we had the likes of 'Toy Story 3' and 'How to Train Your Dragon', a time when Pixar and Dreamworks ruled supreme (Pixar winning of course), along came Illumination Entertainment and gave us this supervillain animation.The plot is pretty unoriginal really, jumping on the over used superhero theme. A supervillain is getting old and rusty, losing his flare for evil, at the same time a younger new supervillain threatens his status. So he devises a plan to steal the moon, the greatest feat of supervillainy he can come up with. But in order to carry out this plan he must enlist (adopt) the help of three very young little girls.The whole superhero concept has been popular now for quite some time and in CGI animation its no different. Along with other similar flicks such as 'The Incredibles' and 'Megamind' the whole idea is beginning to feel a little swamped I can't deny. This film mainly centres on the supervillains point of view, how he lives, his daily habits, his job being an evil mastermind etc...a nice angle that was original until later in the year when 'Megamind' came out.At his side are an army of little yellow minions that look like old 8-bit video game characters not too dissimilar from Pac-Man. Now at first these little guys are quite amusing with their pratfalls, face slapping and general simple minded tomfoolery, but it wears thin fast. Their whole routine is the same all the way through the film and I'm sure even kids may tire of it. I'm not even sure what the hell they are suppose to be seeing as all other characters in this film are human.I really liked the initial idea of this film and the start, I loved Gru's big Gothic house squeezed in between a line of regular houses. I liked his outrageously over sized supervillain vehicle, his little demon-like dog and the interior of his lair which was like a cross between James Bond and Hammer horror. Lots of ingenious gadgets, secret doors/trap doors etc...in a thick Gothic German expressionist-like design.Unfortunately the film becomes way too sickly and sweet for me (yes I know its for kids mainly). After he adopts the three little girls and starts to realise he enjoys them being around, losing sight of his evilness, it just becomes quite lame frankly. The film isn't sure what it wants to be or where its going, even the humour begins to lag.In the end all we're left with is a semi decent animated film which does look glorious no doubt, but with a plot that can't decide which route to go down. None of the characters are particularly interesting or fun, Steve Carell doesn't help make the evil Gru any more memorable and the old scientist character that works with him is dreadful!. He's actually quite scary looking I think, plus with that awful cockney accent from Brand...utter fail.Very wishy washy kids film that struggles to keep you interested and in no way competes with the big guns. Clearly trying to be zany and full of fresh ideas but you can see its not really worked out, its not a bad film, its just rather flat and anti climatic. How on earth this film was popular I don't know, the sequel was no surprise but I just don't see the hype over this.5/10