Movies
Dr. Seuss' worlds make for nice animation material, but skill-wise the Illumination studio wasn't quite ready to tackle it. There are glimpses of creativity and a few interesting moments, but overall it felt too much like some generic US animation feature, with some subpar musical bits and rather poor voice acting.
The third (and let's hope final) entry in the Despicable Me franchise. A perfectly predictable cash-in that adds nothing substantial to the previous films, but managed to draw in the crowd based on reputation alone. Can't say I enjoyed it much, even when my expectations were pretty low to begin with. As if there weren't enough irritating characters, this third entry introduces Gru's brother. A more fun and carefree version of Gru, because that's the kind of weak characterization films like these hope to get away with. Together they plan one final heist, one that won't go quite as planned. Like most of these films, my main issue lies with the comedy, which is bland and irritating. Annoying characters, horrible puns, predictable gags, everything feels just completely lazy. The animation is competent, but the art style is ugly and the soundtrack a disaster. At least the film is so unmemorable that I'll have forgotten all about it by tomorrow. Generic nonsense.Read all
The yellow brigade is back. They're still as annoying as ever and one can only wonder why this series continues to appeal to cinemagoers. It feels like the end of a chapter in US animation cinema though. There's a new wind blowing and slowly films like these will begin to disappear. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking, a guy can dream, right? Gru is still a little kid, but he knows exactly what he wants to be when he grows up: a supervillain. For that, he needs his trusted minions, but they aren't too bright and they always get him into trouble. When Gru receives an invitation to join the Vicious 6, he feels this might be the start of his career. The comedy is absolutely horrible, the art style is ugly and the film is noisy. It's aimed at young kids and it makes no effort to be anything more than the byproduct of a well-oiled marketing machine. There is budget and technical competence, which makes it a tad more bearable, other than that it's pretty insufferable.Read all
Minions (one of the more successful answers to Ice Age's Scrat). The byproduct of the Despicable Me franchise that would eventually outgrow its source material. It's no surprise then that they quickly capitalized on their success and produced a stand-alone film for these yellow blobs. They were the worst thing about Despicable Me, and they're by far the worst thing in their own movie. The Minions are mostly just noisy and annoying, babbling the entire time while leaning on some simple slapstick to provide the humor. I don't think I laughed a single time though, which is lethal for a comedy. Visually there's not much here either, apart from a very short cartoony sequence detailing an evil plot, which at least looked different from the norm. The rest of the characters are pretty bland (including poor dubbing) and the plot is as plain and predictable as can be. As bad as I feared it would be.Read all