Despicable Me 3

Year: 2017
Directors: Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda and Eric Guillon
Voice cast: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Trey Parker


Plot: Gru has his hands full dealing with a new villain named Balthazar Bratt, and the discovery of his long lost twin brother, who tries to persuade him to become a villain again.


Review: So after discovering he is capable of being a surrogate father in the first film and finding love in the second film, what's next for villain-turned-hero Gru? This time it's finding out he has a twin brother.

Gru's twin brother Dru is not bald, wealthy and quite a charmer. Upon meeting Gru, Dru sees an opportunity to become the villain their late father was, and tries to persuade his elder brother to show him the ropes. But Gru, now a father and happily married to Lucy, isn't keen on it, especially after losing his job at the Anti Villain League due to failing to capture Balthazar Bratt, a villain obsessed with the 80's era. To make matters worse, his Minions throw a revolt and quit when he refuses to go back to being a villain again.

Director Pierre Coffin teams up with his Minions co-director Kyle Balda and character designer Eric Guillon to present another Despicable Me instalment that pretty much gives audiences what they naturally expect from these films. The theme of family is front and centre as usual, with Gru bonding with his not-so-good-at-being-a-villain brother Dru, while Lucy tries to bond with the girls as their new mother. Some of these sequences work, some of them not so much. Personally I found Dru to be a tad annoying and clumsy, and not in a good way. A subplot about Agnes trying to get a sighting of an actual unicorn is alright and might make you go awww, but it's always like that when it comes to Agnes.

The film works better when it focuses on Gru battling Bratt, with a nice mixture of humor and action thrown in, and some 80's dance music to follow as well, like Bad, Sussudio etc. And of course, the obligatory Minion segments are present, though most of them are pretty meh, save for the sequence where they break out of prison.

My main gripe however would be how quickly Gru and Dru resolve their differences in the third act, but it's a cartoon so it's more or less forgivable. The final sequence featuring a battle between Gru and Bratt while Lucy rescues the girls is quite entertaining, and is on par with similar final fights in the previous instalments.

All in all, the third Despicable Me film is solid entertainment if you liked the first two films, and a good way to spend 90 minutes. (7/10)