Emotion And Family Bonding In The Movie Despicable Me 3

Despicable Me 3 is a 2017 movie produced by Illumination Entertainment, an animation studio. Its genre falls under family comedy and its sub-genre is animated action. Despicable Me 3 is a third installment for the movie Despicable Me. Despicable Me 3 is rated PG, so it would be targeting ages from 5 and up. Despicable Me 3 is a good film which is great at sending a message of family bonding, including many greatly managed subplots, and a villain with a great backstory that sends a great 80’s vibe, however, some material in the film should be parental advice.

The main character, Gru (Steve Carell), is a former supervillain who is the adopted father of 3 girls, which are Edith (Dana Gaier), Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), and Angus (Nev Scharrel). As the movie begins Gru and his new wife, Lucy (Kristen Wiig), get fired from the Anti-Villain League by Valerie Da Vinci (Jenny Slate), because they failed to capture a former 1980s child TV star, named Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker), who steals the world's largest diamond. Gru then finds out he has a twin brother and flies his family and him to meet him in Freedonia. His brother, who admires him because he was his father's favorite son, for the reason that he was a great villain and better than Dru in his father's eyes, wants Gru to teach him all about “The arts of villainy”. Without letting Lucy know, Gru plans to steal the diamond from Bratt and lets his brother believe he is doing an outlaw act and that he is back in being a villain. Will he succeed in defeating Bratt and also still have his brothers trust? Despicable Me 3 portrays the idea of family in many ways, it does not fail to keep demonstrating to us how the bond in a family can overcome any obstacle together.

The movie shows the bond of the family by them all working together to help Gru defeat the villain. As stated in the movie Gru says “Honey you did not have to do that I know how much you love your job” and Lucy replies with “Well, I love other things more” (Chris Meledandri and Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda, 2017) what she refers to this is that her family means much more to her than the job she lost for Gru, this is another example of how they demonstrate the love for each other and what Lucy is willing to risk for them. As the critic, Bob Hoose Noted, “Despicable Me 3 shows us that there is something powerful and healing in the bonds of a loving family. ”(Hoose, Movie Review) The film allows the audience to learn the value in siblings, friends, and parents. Another thing that this movie did greatly was being able to handle all the storylines included, like Gru and Dru meeting and building a bond which was like night and day, all of them trying to defeat the villain, Angus looking for unicorns in the forest, Lucy wants to be a fun mother for her new 3 daughters yet be able to discipline them, and the minions looking for a new villain to serve since Gru does not want to be a villain anymore, but an anti-villain. In addition, on top of all that, they managed to keep the comedy fun.

The amount of subplots in this movie is a great idea because it keeps the audience entertained and from getting bored. This movie also includes the right music for the right moments. By this, I refer to how the scenes that Bratt comes out include 80s music since he is an 80s character, and most of the scenes the minions(voiced by Pierre Coffin) come out in include hip-hop, pop music, or music that goes with what they perceive; rebel-like features, most of the music being by Pharrell Williams. Minions are one of the most things that attract the audience into watching this film since they talk gibberish and make many jokes we somehow understand. What does every action movie need? A bad guy, and what makes this movie much more fun is the new super villain, Balthazar Bratt, which gives an 80s vibe to the movie. The villain is voiced by actor, Trey Parker. The villain played has many cool gadgets, dance moves, and costume. His character is funny, silly, mean, and childish.

The villain's humor and the soundtrack added to the movie because of him lets the audience feel Bratt’s 80s vibe. The soundtrack included for Bratt are 80s artists such as Michael Jackson, Madonna, A-Ha, and Nena. This villain has a great backstory on why he has become a villain and the reason he is seeking revenge, which is not always greatly done in most action films. Bratts backstory mentions how his fame as the actor, Evil Bratt, a child prodigy and criminal mastermind bent on world domination, was and how it starts diminishing as he hits puberty, then soon after proceeds to cancel his show. As this happens he sees how nobody pays much attention to him anymore, so he starts to believe he was the character he played on TV and states he is going to cancel Hollywood like how they canceled his show by destroying Hollywood much like the strategies he used in one of his episodes in his TV show. Bratt stands out a lot because of his 80s humor and he is more interesting than the previous villains(Vector and El Macho). As I stated before some content is suggested to be parent advised.

For example, Gru at one point results half nude as the minions and the villain do at some point too, however, no private body part is visible. In addition, minions also laugh at body parts such as “boobs”, and many dangerous things are portrayed since it is an evil v. good film. Language is mild using words such as “loser”, “failure”, and “fat” are also mentioned in parts of the film. Gru also tends to talk about himself badly and saying that his mother told him that his dad died of disappointment when he was born. His mother also makes fun of him by notifying him that she “obviously” got the second pick when she and his father got divorced. According to Rotten Tomatoes, 60% of critics gave it a positive review, which is the percentage of 178 reviews of critics, and 54% of the audience liked Despicable Me 3 from 78,102 users (“Rotten Tomatoes”, 2018).

Many of these critics believed it was fun and sentimental. Like past films, it still manages to live up to the first movie Despicable Me and never fails to send the central idea which is Emotion and family bonding. This is shown throughout the film till the end, where the minions come back to work for him, not because they didn't find any other villains, but because of the good and powerful memories Grus gave them when they were united. This film has definitely left us waiting for a fourth film to come out.