Despicable Me (film)

Despicable Me
File:Despicable me 1.jpg Teaser poster
Directed by	Pierre Coffin Chris Renaud Sergio Pablos
Written by	Ken Daurio Cinco Paul
Produced by	John Cohen Janet Healy Chris Meledandri
Starring	Steve Carell Jason Segel Russell Brand Julie Andrews Will Arnett Kristen Wiig Miranda Cosgrove Dana Gaier Elsie Fisher
Edited by	Gregory Perler Pam Ziegenhagen
Music by	Hans Zimmer Heitor Pereira Pharrell Williams
Production company	Illumination Entertainment
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	July 9, 2010 (2010-07-09)
Running time	95 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$69 million
Box office	$297,598,415

Despicable Me is a 2010 American computer-animated 3-D comedy film from Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment that was released on July 9, 2010 in the United States. The film stars Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig, and Miranda Cosgrove. It is the first CGI feature produced by Universal, in association with its Illumination Entertainment division.

The story is of a supervillain named Gru who plans to use three orphan girls as pawns for a grand scheme, only to find that their innocent love is profoundly changing him.

Plot

When a busload of tourists stops at the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, a boy named Justin accidentally falls onto it to discover that it has been stolen and replaced by an inflatable rubber duplicate. News of the theft shocks and puzzles the world.

In the middle of a suburban neighborhood sits a black house with a dead lawn. Unbeknownst to the neighbors, hidden deep beneath this home is the vast secret hideout of the supervillain Gru (Steve Carell) and his army of "minions," which are tiny yellow pill-shaped humanoids in overalls and goggles. When he learns of the Pyramid theft, his pride is badly wounded and he resolves to pull the biggest heist in world history: stealing the Moon. Gru tries to get a loan from the local Bank of Evil (formerly Lehman Brothers), where he meets a young supervillain named Vector (Jason Segel). While Gru is reading through the blueprints for his Moon heist rocket, Vector annoys him by talking about his name and showing him his newest weapon, a gun that shoots piranhas. Mr. Perkins (Will Arnett), the bank president, refuses to give Gru a loan until he obtains the shrink ray necessary for the plan. He tells Gru that he is getting too old, and the new supervillains are younger with more money-producing schemes - like Vector, who is revealed to be the one who stole the pyramid. As Gru leaves the bank, he shoots Vector in the head with his freeze ray while he is trying to reload his piranha gun.

Gru and his minions steal the shrink ray from a secret lab in East Asia, but Vector promptly steals it from him and shrinks his ship as revenge for freezing his head; Gru attempts to get it back, but all his attempts to enter the base prove futile. After seeing three orphaned girls named Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Elsie Fisher) get into Vector's lair to sell cookies, Gru adopts them in order to use them to steal back the shrink ray. Vector has placed a large cookie order, so Gru has his assistant, Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand), build several cookie-shaped robots to slip into the boxes. The cookie robots are designed to infiltrate Vector's lair from the inside and help steal the shrink ray from Vector's vault. The theft nearly fails when the robots inadvertently seal Gru inside the vault, but he and his minions eventually (after a close call) escape through the main entrance.

On the way home, the girls ask to go to an amusement park called Super Silly Fun Land; Gru agrees to take them, intending to leave the girls there, but is forced to ride the roller coaster with them, and bonds with them during the trip. Back at home, he fine-tunes his plan and presents it to Mr. Perkins while being interrupted by the girls. Perkins surprises him by again refusing him the loan--claiming that while he doesn't have a problem with the plan, he doesn't want Gru to do it. This leads Gru into a flashback of his childhood, where we see he's wanted to go to the moon ever since he was a child. He tried to impress his mother (Julie Andrews) with models (and an actual working model) and make her proud of him, but she never seemed to care about anything he did-thus fueling his desire. Perkins then tells Vector (revealed to be his son Victor, who named himself after the mathematical term) that Gru has the shrink ray. Though Gru is ready to abandon his plan due to lack of funds, the girls and the minions take up a collection to keep it going.

After a month or so passes, Nefario, beginning to see the girls as a distraction to Gru, contacts Miss Hattie (Kristen Wiig), the girls' nasty mistress from the local orphanage, who arrives to take the girls back to the orphanage after he claims Gru wanted to give them back. Both Gru and the girls are heartbroken. The moon heist and an important ballet recital the girls are in fall on the same day. With a broken heart, Gru flies off to the moon.

Gru shrinks the Moon, pockets it, and rushes back to Earth when he finds the recital ticket (originally given to him by Agnes and slipped into his pocket by one of the minions prior to the launch) and realizes he has time to catch it. However, it has ended by the time he arrives. On the seat that the girls reserved for him, he finds a note from Vector, who has kidnapped the girls, telling him to bring the moon. After forcing Gru to hand over the moon, Vector goes back on the deal and keeps the girls as his captives. This enrages Gru, who storms Vector's lair, his defenses proving useless. Vector then leaves his lair in an escape pod with the girls inside. Gru chases after them, attempting to hitchhike on the exterior of the ship, and nearly falls to his death, but is rescued by Dr. Nefario in the ship that Vector shrank. Nefario reveals that the effects of the shrink ray are not permanent and the effect wears off at a rate proportional to its original mass (which he calls the "Nefario Principle"). As Gru gives chase to Vector, the effects of the shrink ray on the Moon begin to wear off, causing the Moon to grow and smash open the glass bubble holding the girls. Gru rescues them with the help of his minions, while the (rapidly-expanding) Moon wrecks Vector's controls, causing his ship to hyperjump and carry the moon back into orbit.

Gru and the girls settle down to live a happy life as a family, while Vector is stranded on the Moon with a minion that drank a sample of anti-gravity serum and floated out of the lab after Nefario forgot to close the skylight. The girls give a special recital for the minions, Gru, and his mother, who, after years of neglecting her son, finally tells him she is proud of him. The music changes from Swan Lake to disco, and everyone present rushes onstage to dance.

Cast

• Steve Carell as Gru, the world's former number one supervillain. He at first only adopted the girls so he could steal the shrink ray from Vector, but later warms up to the girls and finally becomes their adoptive father.
• Jason Segel as Vector (also known as Victor Perkins), the world's new #1 supervillain and egotistical nerd. He has a penchant for inventing weaponry that launches underwater life.
• Russell Brand as Dr. Nefario, Gru's elderly, hearing impaired scientist assistant and good friend.
• Julie Andrews as Gru's mother. In several of Gru's flashbacks, he showed her his plans to go to the Moon, but she ignores everything he said. In the end, she learns to appreciate her son's efforts.
• Will Arnett as Mr. Perkins, the president of the Bank of Evil and Vector's father. He doesn't like Gru very much and is strong enough to juice an apple with his bare hand.
• Kristen Wiig as Miss Hattie, the mistress of a local orphanage, Miss Hattie's House of Girls. For the most part she seems to hate her job and sees the girls more as an irritation than anything else as well as using the kids as child labor.
• Miranda Cosgrove as Margo, the oldest girl of the group of orphans. Miranda describes her as "a little mother" - because she is very protective of her two younger sisters. She is, for a majority of the film, untrusting of Gru. But she later learns to grow close to Gru and her sisters feel the same way
• Dana Gaier as Edith, the middle girl of the group of orphans. She likes disgusting things and wears a pink beanie. She is described by her voice actor to be "sort of a trouble maker". She is the only one of the girls to think that Vector's and Gru's inventions and weapons were "cool."
• Elsie Fisher as Agnes, the youngest girl of the group of orphans. She is known for being addicted to unicorns and loves Gru from the start.
• Pierre Coffin as Tim / Bob / Mark / Phil / Stuart, five of Gru's minions.
• Chris Renaud as Dave, one of Gru's minions who fired a missile launcher during the minion gathering.
• Ken Jeong as Talk Show Host.
• Danny R. McBride as Fred McDade, Gru's next door neighbor.
• Jack McBrayer as Tourist Father / Carnival Barker.
• Mindy Kaling as Tourist Mother.
• Jemaine Clement as Jerry, one of Gru's minions.
• Rob Huebel as Anchorman / Newscaster.
• Ken Daurio as Egyptian Guard.
• Philip Mathew as Second Egyptian Guard and Himself.
• Additional Voices as the rest of of Gru's minions.

Music

The score to Despicable Me – composed by Hans Zimmer, Heitor Pereira, and Pharrell Williams – was recorded with a 67-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony at the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox.

Songs for the film were also recorded by Lupe Fiasco ("Minion Mambo") and Robin Thicke ("My Life").

Release

Marketing

Sneak peeks were also shown in episodes of The Biggest Loser. It was also featured on Last Comic Standing when Gru comes in to audition. There has also been a minion that came in to audition, but he was mute for the duration.

IHOP restaurants are promoting the film by introducing three new menu items, a kids' breakfast meal, and a drink all having the word "minion" in them.

Short advertisements were run on USA during recent NCIS marathons where the main character Gru says that a threatening series of letters is his own name G-R-U. This is actually a reference to the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye, Russian military intelligence.

Best Buy has released a free Smartphone application called "Movie Mode" that translates what the Minions are saying during the end credits. Special content can be unlocked from the application after seeing the film.

Video game

A video game titled Despicable Me: The Game was released for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and Wii. A Nintendo DS version was released under the name Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem.

Reception

Critical response

The film has received generally positive reviews from critics. Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 79% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 140 reviews, with an average score of 6.9/10. The critical consensus is: Borrowing heavily (and intelligently) from Pixar and Looney Tunes, Despicable Me is a surprisingly thoughtful, family-friendly treat with a few surprises of its own. Among "Top Critics," comprising critics from the top newspapers and other publications, the film holds an approval rating of 87% based on 32 reviews. Metacritic, another review aggregation website, assigned the film a score of 72%, based on 34 reviews from mainstream critics.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times praised the film, awarding it three stars out of a possible four. Other positive reviews came from Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone.

In contrast, A. O. Scott of the New York Times disliked the film, stating "while there's nothing worth despising, there's not much to remember either." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "there's nothing in this to engage an audience. Obviously, no one cares if this guy gets to remain as the world's top bad guy. Nor is this situation inherently amusing in a character way or even interesting in a satirical or sardonic way. There is simply nothing here, except a pretext for lots of labored, slapstick spy-versus-spy type shenanigans between the two 'villains.' Twenty minutes into "Despicable Me," nothing has happened."

Box office

Released on July 9, 2010, in the United States, Despicable Me opened at the number one spot at the box office and pulled in $56.3 million, making it the third biggest opening grossing for an animated film in 2010 behind Toy Story 3 and Shrek Forever After. In its second weekend, the film dipped only 42% to second place behind Inception with $32.8 million earned. The film then had another small drop of 27% in its third weekend and finished in third place with $23.8 million. On Thursday, August 5, the film crossed the $200 million mark, becoming the first Universal film to reach the milestone since 2007's The Bourne Ultimatum. As of August 22, 2010 the film has made $231,056,990 in the United States and Canada as well as $55,822,198 in foreign countries giving the film a worldwide total of $296,256,990. This film is also Universal's ninth highest-grossing film (unadjusted for inflation).

Sequel

Chris Meledandri said that a sequel is in the works.

External links

• Official website
• Despicable Me at IMDb
• Despicable Me at Box Office Mojo
• Despicable Me at Rotten Tomatoes
• Despicable Me at Metacritic