![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
When we got adopted by a bald guy, I thought this would be more like "Annie"
So my niece has a T-shirt with a Minion on it. This was a meaningless piece of pop culture to me until this weekend, when it turns out that Despicable Me (2010) is a startlingly charming children's movie of the kind that can be enjoyed by adults without excess of either irony or fart jokes.1
The title refers to the protagonist Gru, voiced by Steve Carrell with an outrageous Eurosmash accent that is mostly pseudo-Russian but honestly reminds me of nothing so much as the accent Peter Jurasik invented for Londo Mollari on Babylon 5 (1994–1998), in which case there's a healthy dose of the Borscht Belt in its DNA. His character design is equally fantastic: he looks like a cross between Alastair Sim and Uncle Fester, tall and bulky-shouldered with a piercing nose, stalky legs, and caterpillar brows with a toggle setting between glowering and plaintive. On a normal human body, his black drainpipe jeans and matching zip-up jacket would give him a middle-aged geek-chic look, his no-neck delineated by a charcoal-striped scarf; he will freeze-ray any customer who gets between him and his morning coffee. His house cranes over its neighbors like the Addams mansion; the basement is a cavernous space-age hangar occupied by the lab-coated Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand) and a nearly infinite number of knee-high, lemon-yellow Minions (mostly Pierre Coffin, occasionally Chris Renaud and Jermaine Clement) in their little boiler suits and welding goggles. I am not at all surprised that these creatures got their own spin-off. They are not exactly what would happen if you dropped Beaker and the Doozers in a blender, but they possess some of the same mad engineering charm. They chatter away at one another in their own dialect, out of which a recognizable non-English word will occasionally emerge, like a breezy "Da, da, da" after being given instructions; they look almost identical and about half a dozen differentiate themselves by personality over the course of the story, which genuinely impresses me in a digitally animated film. They have boundless enthusiasm and a problematic attention span. They'll build whatever nefarious invention Gru can design, but as the story opens, he's got a problem pure labor can't solve: unlike Goldfinger or Lex Luthor, Gru is not an independently wealthy supervillain. He was formerly responsible for some bold acts of theft and mayhem—and he's got the newspaper clippings to prove it—but these days he's in danger of being outcompeted by younger, flashier, meaner villains with sleeker tech and better PR. Some unknown baddie just replaced the Great Pyramid of Giza with an inflatable replica and it's making "all other villains look lame." Gru wants to prove he's still in the game, but he's taken out so many loans from the Bank of Evil that he can't even get funding for his world-defying plan to steal the moon unless he can convince the bank's pointy-haired president that he's a real threat to international security, not just another minor megalomaniac with a mortgage.
Toward this end, for reasons that play logically in context, he adopts three small orphan girls so that he can steal a shrink ray.
The plot from here on is obvious: unless it's going to play against audience expectation to the point of cruelty, Gru's phony family will have to become the real thing; his reluctant acts of caretaking2 will become heartfelt and the three orphans—who are not exactly pushovers themselves—will find themselves bonding with this awkward, slippery, inadvertently endearing man. This is indeed the arc we get. But it's not saccharine. And just as importantly, neither is it winkingly ironic. The subversive approach works with Edith (Dana Gaier), a gap-toothed, blond-shocked hellion whose pink-striped sweater and pink woolly knit hat do not remotely disguise the fact that she's hit adolescent cynicism about five years ahead of schedule without losing an ounce of childhood bloodthirstiness. When Gru incinerates a rigged carnival game that was about to cheat five-year-old, unicorn-obsessed Agnes (Elsie Fisher) out of a fair and square win, Edith's eyes widen with hero worship. She was already impressed with the number of medieval torture devices and futuristic weapons left casually lying around her new home. But he earns Agnes' trust by finding her a new toy unicorn after her beloved scruffy original is accidentally disintegrated in his kitchen, which is the kind of gesture that can win a child for life even if meant mostly as an expedient remedy for her heartbroken crying, and cusp-of-puberty Margo (Miranda Cosgrove) with her glasses, her sensible plaid skirt, and her hand-me-down tweed jacket is too old and too used to fending for herself and her sisters3 to fall for anything other than real parental commitment. Dolls and explosions are nice, but they're not proof of safety or love or stability. She's the one who could get really hurt by Gru's thoughtless subterfuge; intelligent and defensively sarcastic, she's the one who's most like him. But they are all believable children, which means they are three young girls who aren't adorable tot plot counters—they can be, from moment to moment, any selection or combination of sweet, smart, suspicious, vulnerable, manipulative, imaginative, ungovernable, not constantly in agreement, not necessarily well-behaved, and always lovable. Gru can't figure out how he fetched up on the sidelines of ballet practice surrounded by beaming soccer moms with smartphones who really approve of a father who takes his daughters to dance class, but the viewer could see it coming for miles. They're fantastic kids and he's a supervillain, not an idiot. He has reasons to resist emotional attachment and reasons these particular children get tangled in his heartstrings. The story assumes sincerity when it comes to sentiment and it's stronger for it.
It's also a nice goofy romp through the tropes of supervillainy coupled with some contemporary critique—it doesn't lose time spelling out emotional issues whose implications the audience can already understand because it has to get on with staging a sky chase with a shrink ray or a heist scene with full props to Topkapi (1964) or a pulp sci-fi rocket launch which is also oddly and appropriately earnest. The real villain of the piece is self-monikered up-and-comer Vector (Jason Segal), a track-suited whiz kid with all the smarm and ego of Silicon Valley bro culture; all his inventions have the bland seamlessness of Apple products except where his Bondian fixations show through, like the giant shark circling under the glass floor of his TV room and his insistence on inventing a working piranha gun.4 He is magnetically charmless. He has catchphrases. He probably studies how to be a pick-up artist when he's not designing his own logo. Unfortunately, he's not stupid, just self-centered, entitled, and petty enough to be a real threat: "Now maybe you'll think twice before you freeze someone's head!" Gru can be flamboyantly callous and macabre, but he knows, even if he has to be reminded of it, that people can be hurt. He also knows about gravitation and ballistic trajectories and why it is never a good idea to wear smiley face boxers on a day on which you might plausibly find yourself hanging upside down, with or without a giant shark underneath you. Most scenes in the film are running on more than one level, but when the top layer is the stunts and the gags and the mad science, it is really, reliably funny.
I'd had no idea. Based on casual exposure to trailers and posters at the time, I'd expected Despicable Me to be extruded Pixar-lite product. As it is, I think it would appeal to fans of Noel Streatfeild as much as fans of Brad Bird. Julie Andrews has a small part, but I think she was cast on her ability to sound fantastically unimpressed and she delivers. There is a sequence in an amusement park that is basically an on-ride video for a fictitious roller coaster that I hope somebody had a lot of fun designing, because it starts with a more-than-ninety-degree drop and I would ride it. Also, I recognize that it was designed for 3-D, but I am charmed by the ending gag where two Minions compete to break the fourth wall, refereed by an increasingly exasperated third; when they finally succeed, the "film" smashes, catches, stutters, and melts, leaving a white screen with an immense projected shadow of a Minion who looks awkward for a minute and then starts doing shadow impressions. It's cute at home, but in a theater it would kill. I don't want a Minion T-shirt, but I am seriously considering taking my brother's advice and watching the prequel. This delightful surprise brought to you by my only slightly villainous backers at Patreon.
1. There is one fart joke in the script and it is hilarious. It is immediately lampshaded by an embarrassed mad scientist, trailing off in resignation: "I said dart gun, not . . ." His stalwart but hard-of-hearing research assistant, having just made one of the ubiquitous Muppet-like Minions pass out with a well-aimed shot of artificial intestinal gas, is visibly relieved: "I was wondering under what circumstances we would use this."
2. His first attempt at providing the girls with a nurturing environment is to furnish a corner of the kitchen with a bowl full of candy and some newspapers on the floor. In his defense, it probably worked with the bug-eyed, shark-toothed, bluish-hair-sprouting abomination of science he refers to as his dog. Alternately, it may be why the thing goes for his throat half the time they're alone.
3. I can't actually tell if the girls are meant to be related by blood—Agnes' character design looks East Asian, while Edith and Margo appear to be white. They function as a trio, however, and it is never suggested even by the orphanage's indifferent manager (Kristen Wiig, not quite in Miss Hannigan mode) that they be separated.
4. Later upgraded to a squid gun, with considerably more success.
The title refers to the protagonist Gru, voiced by Steve Carrell with an outrageous Eurosmash accent that is mostly pseudo-Russian but honestly reminds me of nothing so much as the accent Peter Jurasik invented for Londo Mollari on Babylon 5 (1994–1998), in which case there's a healthy dose of the Borscht Belt in its DNA. His character design is equally fantastic: he looks like a cross between Alastair Sim and Uncle Fester, tall and bulky-shouldered with a piercing nose, stalky legs, and caterpillar brows with a toggle setting between glowering and plaintive. On a normal human body, his black drainpipe jeans and matching zip-up jacket would give him a middle-aged geek-chic look, his no-neck delineated by a charcoal-striped scarf; he will freeze-ray any customer who gets between him and his morning coffee. His house cranes over its neighbors like the Addams mansion; the basement is a cavernous space-age hangar occupied by the lab-coated Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand) and a nearly infinite number of knee-high, lemon-yellow Minions (mostly Pierre Coffin, occasionally Chris Renaud and Jermaine Clement) in their little boiler suits and welding goggles. I am not at all surprised that these creatures got their own spin-off. They are not exactly what would happen if you dropped Beaker and the Doozers in a blender, but they possess some of the same mad engineering charm. They chatter away at one another in their own dialect, out of which a recognizable non-English word will occasionally emerge, like a breezy "Da, da, da" after being given instructions; they look almost identical and about half a dozen differentiate themselves by personality over the course of the story, which genuinely impresses me in a digitally animated film. They have boundless enthusiasm and a problematic attention span. They'll build whatever nefarious invention Gru can design, but as the story opens, he's got a problem pure labor can't solve: unlike Goldfinger or Lex Luthor, Gru is not an independently wealthy supervillain. He was formerly responsible for some bold acts of theft and mayhem—and he's got the newspaper clippings to prove it—but these days he's in danger of being outcompeted by younger, flashier, meaner villains with sleeker tech and better PR. Some unknown baddie just replaced the Great Pyramid of Giza with an inflatable replica and it's making "all other villains look lame." Gru wants to prove he's still in the game, but he's taken out so many loans from the Bank of Evil that he can't even get funding for his world-defying plan to steal the moon unless he can convince the bank's pointy-haired president that he's a real threat to international security, not just another minor megalomaniac with a mortgage.
Toward this end, for reasons that play logically in context, he adopts three small orphan girls so that he can steal a shrink ray.
The plot from here on is obvious: unless it's going to play against audience expectation to the point of cruelty, Gru's phony family will have to become the real thing; his reluctant acts of caretaking2 will become heartfelt and the three orphans—who are not exactly pushovers themselves—will find themselves bonding with this awkward, slippery, inadvertently endearing man. This is indeed the arc we get. But it's not saccharine. And just as importantly, neither is it winkingly ironic. The subversive approach works with Edith (Dana Gaier), a gap-toothed, blond-shocked hellion whose pink-striped sweater and pink woolly knit hat do not remotely disguise the fact that she's hit adolescent cynicism about five years ahead of schedule without losing an ounce of childhood bloodthirstiness. When Gru incinerates a rigged carnival game that was about to cheat five-year-old, unicorn-obsessed Agnes (Elsie Fisher) out of a fair and square win, Edith's eyes widen with hero worship. She was already impressed with the number of medieval torture devices and futuristic weapons left casually lying around her new home. But he earns Agnes' trust by finding her a new toy unicorn after her beloved scruffy original is accidentally disintegrated in his kitchen, which is the kind of gesture that can win a child for life even if meant mostly as an expedient remedy for her heartbroken crying, and cusp-of-puberty Margo (Miranda Cosgrove) with her glasses, her sensible plaid skirt, and her hand-me-down tweed jacket is too old and too used to fending for herself and her sisters3 to fall for anything other than real parental commitment. Dolls and explosions are nice, but they're not proof of safety or love or stability. She's the one who could get really hurt by Gru's thoughtless subterfuge; intelligent and defensively sarcastic, she's the one who's most like him. But they are all believable children, which means they are three young girls who aren't adorable tot plot counters—they can be, from moment to moment, any selection or combination of sweet, smart, suspicious, vulnerable, manipulative, imaginative, ungovernable, not constantly in agreement, not necessarily well-behaved, and always lovable. Gru can't figure out how he fetched up on the sidelines of ballet practice surrounded by beaming soccer moms with smartphones who really approve of a father who takes his daughters to dance class, but the viewer could see it coming for miles. They're fantastic kids and he's a supervillain, not an idiot. He has reasons to resist emotional attachment and reasons these particular children get tangled in his heartstrings. The story assumes sincerity when it comes to sentiment and it's stronger for it.
It's also a nice goofy romp through the tropes of supervillainy coupled with some contemporary critique—it doesn't lose time spelling out emotional issues whose implications the audience can already understand because it has to get on with staging a sky chase with a shrink ray or a heist scene with full props to Topkapi (1964) or a pulp sci-fi rocket launch which is also oddly and appropriately earnest. The real villain of the piece is self-monikered up-and-comer Vector (Jason Segal), a track-suited whiz kid with all the smarm and ego of Silicon Valley bro culture; all his inventions have the bland seamlessness of Apple products except where his Bondian fixations show through, like the giant shark circling under the glass floor of his TV room and his insistence on inventing a working piranha gun.4 He is magnetically charmless. He has catchphrases. He probably studies how to be a pick-up artist when he's not designing his own logo. Unfortunately, he's not stupid, just self-centered, entitled, and petty enough to be a real threat: "Now maybe you'll think twice before you freeze someone's head!" Gru can be flamboyantly callous and macabre, but he knows, even if he has to be reminded of it, that people can be hurt. He also knows about gravitation and ballistic trajectories and why it is never a good idea to wear smiley face boxers on a day on which you might plausibly find yourself hanging upside down, with or without a giant shark underneath you. Most scenes in the film are running on more than one level, but when the top layer is the stunts and the gags and the mad science, it is really, reliably funny.
I'd had no idea. Based on casual exposure to trailers and posters at the time, I'd expected Despicable Me to be extruded Pixar-lite product. As it is, I think it would appeal to fans of Noel Streatfeild as much as fans of Brad Bird. Julie Andrews has a small part, but I think she was cast on her ability to sound fantastically unimpressed and she delivers. There is a sequence in an amusement park that is basically an on-ride video for a fictitious roller coaster that I hope somebody had a lot of fun designing, because it starts with a more-than-ninety-degree drop and I would ride it. Also, I recognize that it was designed for 3-D, but I am charmed by the ending gag where two Minions compete to break the fourth wall, refereed by an increasingly exasperated third; when they finally succeed, the "film" smashes, catches, stutters, and melts, leaving a white screen with an immense projected shadow of a Minion who looks awkward for a minute and then starts doing shadow impressions. It's cute at home, but in a theater it would kill. I don't want a Minion T-shirt, but I am seriously considering taking my brother's advice and watching the prequel. This delightful surprise brought to you by my only slightly villainous backers at Patreon.
1. There is one fart joke in the script and it is hilarious. It is immediately lampshaded by an embarrassed mad scientist, trailing off in resignation: "I said dart gun, not . . ." His stalwart but hard-of-hearing research assistant, having just made one of the ubiquitous Muppet-like Minions pass out with a well-aimed shot of artificial intestinal gas, is visibly relieved: "I was wondering under what circumstances we would use this."
2. His first attempt at providing the girls with a nurturing environment is to furnish a corner of the kitchen with a bowl full of candy and some newspapers on the floor. In his defense, it probably worked with the bug-eyed, shark-toothed, bluish-hair-sprouting abomination of science he refers to as his dog. Alternately, it may be why the thing goes for his throat half the time they're alone.
3. I can't actually tell if the girls are meant to be related by blood—Agnes' character design looks East Asian, while Edith and Margo appear to be white. They function as a trio, however, and it is never suggested even by the orphanage's indifferent manager (Kristen Wiig, not quite in Miss Hannigan mode) that they be separated.
4. Later upgraded to a squid gun, with considerably more success.
no subject
We have avoided the Minions movie because everything we've heard about it suggests it's a hot mess and potentially as offensive as funny.
no subject
So noted. My brother likes it better than the sequel (which I am not sure that I need to see) and my niece loves it because it's full of Minions.
no subject
no subject
Dude, I just finished watching a mediocre pre-Code movie because it had John Gilbert in a sound role and I was curious. You are allowed to like things!
no subject
no subject
Not since it came out, but yes. Lilo is still one of my benchmarks for actual kids in movies.
no subject
no subject
Every now and then it works—see Captain America (2011)—but most of the time I agree with you. The movies the studios want to sell me are not the ones I want to see, with the result that I've missed several of the latter in theaters because they look like the former and I am too busy running in the opposite direction.
no subject
We liked it so much that we actually bought it and have rewatched it now and then.
Your remark about Vector (He is magnetically charmless.) is such a perfect put-down. It ought to be employed more broadly in society.
no subject
It's just a wonderful movie! And completely under my radar; nobody even recommended it to me until Charlotte's birthday in December (she had a Minion cake). I'm really happy to see how many people on my friendlist feel the same way.
it brought back memories of the same from childhood, and the tunelessness and storytellingness of it were just right.
Yes. The movie was full of touches like that, which had very little to do with the ways in which small children are conventionally cute in stories and everything to do with the ways in which they are children in real life. I still feel that's stupidly rare.
It ought to be employed more broadly in society.
Thank you! Please feel free to use it whenever the situation demands, with apologies in advance if you encounter situations that demand it.
no subject
no subject
That's adorable and sounds exactly right.
no subject
The sequel, otoh, I watched in the theatre, and it was nice to revisit that universe, but I felt as though it would have worked better as a tv series. There were a number of minor characters who could have used more screen time, and a plot twist I was hoping for never came through. However, it featured a heroine sensible enough to *not* do the usual rom-com thing of misreading a situation and holding a pointless grudge until Act III.
no subject
That's a really interesting criticism. So you were fine with the basic plot, just not with how quickly it all went by?
However, it featured a heroine sensible enough to *not* do the usual rom-com thing of misreading a situation and holding a pointless grudge until Act III.
Oh, thank God. Even if I never see the movie, I'm glad to hear it. I can't stand that trope and I rejoice whenever a narrative has no time for it.
no subject
no subject
(My wife now sometimes speaks in minionese.)
no subject
no subject
I'm aware of the existence and the general look of The Powerpuff Girls, but I never watched the show. Do you recommend it?
no subject
The Powerpuffs are interesting but the show doesn't run with the development. Steven Universe does. Steven's mother is an alien, a Gem, Rose Quartz. Steven is beginning to find his own Gem capabilities. His mother is no longer around and he lives with his dad, who is the most realistic dad I've seen on TV in ages. And there are other Gems around guiding and protecting him.
no subject
I am watching Steven Universe. I'm just stuck waiting for the next batch of episodes like everyone else after the latest StevenBomb. It's brilliant.
(I am also stuck waiting for the finale of Gravity Falls. My life in TV animation is very frustrating.)
no subject
But realistically, and sans nostalgia...I'd say ask around, watch what people tell you are the best few episodes, and don't worry about catching the whole thing --each episode tends to be fairly standalone.
(Also if you're gonna watch any of that batch, Dexter's Lab was The Best, because mad science and ballerinas.)
~Sor
no subject
The Kidlet loves her minions, and I have given her many tshirts with them on it, but her fave shirt is the one that says "It Wasnt Me"
no subject
Nice!
My family refers to small children as "kidlets," too. I think of it as starting with my grandparents.
no subject
no subject
I could not stand the sequel and avoided the prequel.
no subject
Thank you!
I could not stand the sequel and avoided the prequel.
I am planning to avoid the sequel; my brother didn't think it was as good and the one piece of information I've heard about the plot I am resolutely ignoring. He liked the prequel (and my niece loves it, because it is full of Minions), but I'm hearing more ambivalent things from my friendlist.
no subject
I completely believe that Gru's voice is a Molari tribute - I thought so at the time. The movie contains enough other obvious references and tribute nods I'd believe it was intentional.
no subject
That's a compliment!
In particular the sequel seemed to be NUTHING but juvenile fart jokes and seemed to have lost 80% of the sense of what made the original fun, funny, and memorable.
Oh, dear. One of the things I liked best about the sole fart joke in Despicable Me was Gru and Dr. Nefario's mutually mortified look of let us never speak of this again.
The movie contains enough other obvious references and tribute nods I'd believe it was intentional.
What did you spot?
no subject
My kids are totally Minion-obsessed. They thought the fart-joke film was hilarious; the adults were much more "meh" about it.
no subject
According to IMDB "Steve Carell describes Gru's accent as a cross between Ricardo Montalban and Bela Lugosi." Make of that what you will.
no subject
no subject
I really recommend it!
no subject
no subject
I think it must have succeeded on critical merits and word of mouth, because if the trailer had hinted at the kind of movie Despicable Me actually was, I'd have seen it in theaters five years ago.
no subject
Agreed the sequel failed on multiple levels (it did retain a few good minions moments, but otherwise meh). The minions-only prequel has the odd problem of feeling like two movies glued together poorly: a find-the-mcguffin happily-ever-after, which does have some fun set-pieces, and then a peculiar segue into actually-not-funny-enough jokes about the US view of Britain. Better than the sequel, but only watchable if one's brain is direly in need of cute animation silliness.
no subject
I am delighted by the number of people popping out of the woodwork to approve this movie!
Agreed the sequel failed on multiple levels (it did retain a few good minions moments, but otherwise meh).
I really am not planning to see it. (What are the good Minion moments?)
The minions-only prequel has the odd problem of feeling like two movies glued together poorly: a find-the-mcguffin happily-ever-after, which does have some fun set-pieces, and then a peculiar segue into actually-not-funny-enough jokes about the US view of Britain.
Hmmm.
To be honest, I assumed while watching Despicable Me that Gru had invented the Minions: for a supervillain who stole the Times Square Jumbotron ("You all like watching football on that, huh?") and the Eiffel Tower ("The small one from Las Vegas"), they seemed about the right blend of grandiose vision and eccentric reality.
no subject
The Minion backstory is actually quite delightful: they are utterly ancient and entirely irrepressible. It's hard to beat a T-rex falling into a volcano.
no subject
I was ok with the sequel. I don't remember much about it except it had more Gru interaction with the kids and there were some great mall scenes but I enjoyed it enough to recommend.
no subject
no subject
Ours came very handily from Netflix!
no subject
no subject
I'm sorry! That seems to me a major oversight on Netflix's part.
no subject
(The sequel is devastatingly disappointing (tropes I hate: anything that reeks of fathers owning their daughters and therefore not letting them date, romance plots where there don't need to be romance plot). I have not seen Minions (or any of them? Are there more than one?) and have worked enough with small children that I don't really want to.)
I do not know if you like fanfic, but there is a wonderful piece that serves as an excellent "what happens next" over at Ao3. It is called From Degas to Vegas (http://archiveofourown.org/works/144253) and involves Gru trying to go straight, while his little girls cackle and become ever more villainous.
If you are going to read it (please do, it's short and lovely!), I only ask that when Margo describes the Degas she wants so much, you picture Green Dancers (http://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/green-dancers-edgar-degas.jpg). I saw it last summer at the Chicago Art Institute and it may well be the painting that made me understand why people spend thousands and thousands of dollars on Art. Oh it's beautiful, but alas, I don't have a supervillain for a father...
~Sor
no subject
It was the heartwarming children's mad science family comedy I didn't realize I was waiting for.
I do not know if you like fanfic, but there is a wonderful piece that serves as an excellent "what happens next" over at Ao3. It is called From Degas to Vegas and involves Gru trying to go straight, while his little girls cackle and become ever more villainous.
That sounds delightful; thank you. I have no plans to see the sequel, since I am also not a fan of the overprotective father shtick or mainstream-requisite romances, so will cheerfully accept alternate versions of the characters' future while considering the first movie a satisfactory self-contained canon.
I saw it last summer at the Chicago Art Institute and it may well be the painting that made me understand why people spend thousands and thousands of dollars on Art. Oh it's beautiful, but alas, I don't have a supervillain for a father...
It is lovely. Maybe someday you can be a supervillain and afford it yourself.
no subject
She does inexplicably and irrevocably love minions, those subverbal bananafreak creatures.
HI. I SEE YOU ARE ALIVE.
no subject
I see no reason not to believe it; all evidence indicates your child has excellent narrative capabilities. That's neat and I can see how it could have been awkward.
HI. I SEE YOU ARE ALIVE.
I am not dead! Hoping you are the same!