Despicable Me 3

Grim.

So based on this timeline, I guess this is… after Gru adopts the Manic Pixie Orphans and hooks up with agent 99.

Anyway after some action chase/explosion/flight scenes – Gru is left hanging by a bubblegum speedo, clutching the diamond that Bratt just stole. Alas, Bratt escapes to do crimes another day.

Gru and Lucy arrive at AVL Headquarters. (I’m going to assume they refresh us on what the heck the AVL is, because I’ve already forgotten.)

It’s not looking very evil? So I guess Gru switched sides to pair up with Lucy? (I refuse to brush up on Despicable Me 2, even though our recap for it is right here.

Well, whatever that organization was, they’re both fired now. Crossing my fingers that they go back to villainy.

Lucy and Gru come home to the children to a surprise luau, a kitchy Party-Store backyard picnic with plastic flower leis and grass skirts, bongos, and pineapple decor. 

I mean obviously this is problematic trashy appropriation, but it is accurate for what three mainland white girls would do to… host(?) their version of a ‘luau.’

Meanwhile, the minions are excited for Gru’s job transition, hoping he’ll go back to villainy. When he refuses, they all quit and walk out. 

ORGANIZE! UNIONIZE! YES WE CAN!

Is this turning into a labor rights-themed movie? COULD THIS be something we could get excited about?

(Based on the previous movies in this franchise – Probably not!)

I mean – can you blame the Minions tho?? They searched the earth for eons for a villain to lead them, found their dream boss in Gru, remained loyal companions to him since childhood – only to have him switch to the other side for a few orphan tropes and some skinny booty.

I wanna say something like ‘Bros before hoes’ but like, not in a misogynist way. 

‘Conspirators before..coochie?’

Nope, no – that’s…that’s awful. Let’s pretend this never happened. Moving on.

To support their parents through their unemployment, Agnes the littlest, unicorn-loving daughter decides to sell all of her toys. To show you how cute she is. Awwww… (ugh.)

But what luck! What timing! Gru’s twin brother Dru is reaching out to let him know… that he exists. I guess Gru’s parents did a Parent Trap custody situation (minus the trap).

The family travels to visit Dru in his generic olde-worlde European village of quaint villager customs and sunshine. And it turns out Dru is loaded due to his thriving pig farm. So things are gonna work out (financially)!

But maybe not emotionally! It turns out Dru has everything Gru has, except better. (EXCEPT A HOLLYWOOD-SHAPED WIFE AND PERSONALITY-DEFINING ORPHANS, which I bet is gonna be the big-hearted hole in his life that haunts Dru later in the movie, probably).

Cue Gru’s envious insecurity. I get it. In high school I found out my boyfriend had spent his entire summer in rich-kid art camp with a girl who was hotter, richer, and had a cool-girl duct-tape tube top – along with the kind of body that could pull off a duct-tape tube-top.

Also SHE HAD MY NAME. (Except spelled in a way that makes sense.)

He thought it would be fun and exciting for me to meet her at his end-of-summer art show.

I dropped like 60 self-esteem points and have not recovered to this very day.

Anyhoo, reconciling with my inferiority complex and ridiculous name-based childhood trauma, back to the movie. FOCUS!

Dru has his brother’s affinity for fancy gadgets and adventure, which is fun. Lucy takes the kids out and tries to earn their love with candy and swinging wildly between overly permissive and illogically strict parenting.

Lucy encourages the eldest to be kind to a lonely kid giving out cheese, and I smell something rotten.

Not the cheese. But in a MOVIE TROPE way.

Oh say, do you smell a tired plot device ‘American tourist accidentally gets engaged/married due to cultural confusion.’

As if American engagements aren’t completely confusing, ridiculous, and nonsensical. Flashmobs, awkward public proposals, ridiculous competitions for blood diamonds, and ugly dresses, and all that gendered nonsense? Where are the kids’ movies that make fun of that?

Meanwhile Gru and Dru are bonding and getting along fabulously. They decide to dress up like each other and switch places.

I did this once with my other Irish/Chinese cousin. Our Irish family claims we look exactly alike.

We don’t. (Cue joke about all Asians looking alike.)

Regardless, we swapped outfits and glasses for Halloween, and managed to trick a few white folks in the family, including my cousin’s mom. Which is… hilarious! 

But also sad!

In Gru & Dru’s case, it makes sense since they’re twins. But also no one is convinced. Because I guess even identical twin white folks don’t look alike.

This whole time, all but a couple minions have been exploring the world after quitting Gru’s horde. They ended up in prison, but are growing to miss Gru, because he was a good Leader…Dad…Friend…Boss?

Oh right – back to the accidental engagement plot. The girls shut down the engagement, but oh look here comes the stereotypical swarthy European mom with a mustache. Angry, spitting, and cursing them out for ending the engagement.

It’s not great. There are plenty of funny and necessary scenes in this movie – but this is not one of them.

Anyway, the expected stuff happens. Gru and Dru have a sibling tiff, and of course, the Manic Pixie Dream Orphans get kidnapped by our nemesis-of-the-day, former-child-star Evil Bratt.

In keeping with the previous two Despicable Me movies, the three daughters aren’t really people so much as objectified orphan tropes who exist to define Gru (and to a lesser extent, our main love interest, Lucy). 

Aside from that yard sale from earlier and the ‘accidental-engagement’ side-plot, the girls really aren’t a part of this movie. In fact – we could delete these scenes and forget the girls exist at all, and honestly it’d be a better movie.

I’m starting to realize why the later Minions movie all happen BEFORE the orphans timeline. They’re the worst part of the movie. And you can’t kill them off. Or give them back.

(or heaven forbid, write a decent plotline and character development for them)

These orphans have no personality and need almost constant saving. They’re saccharine cute and feisty but also helpless and don’t really have a storyline, wants, needs, or goals of their own. Through them, we see Gru as a Good And Heroic protagonist because he loves these girls who are so easy to be loved, and occasionally rescues them from harm (which they are only in because of his line of work.)

Since this is the third movie, I can’t really get too upset about this. The script writers for the first two movies told us what they’re all about. So at least they’re consistent in their problematic nonsense.

Message: Adopted children aren’t people, they’re objects to rescue. Adoptive parents are heroes, etc.

Honestly though the relationship between Gru and the minions is far sweeter and illustrates Gru’s heroic qualities in a much more interesting way. The Minions are presumably adults with experience who seek out and consent to the relationship. 

Unlike the adopted children however, the minions aren’t representations of actual groups of human people who are constantly silenced and attacked for speaking up about the industrial adoption complex and consistently misrepresented, tokenized, and objectified in the media.

Along those lines, Gru & Dru are basically fine with the childhood trauma of family separation. Aside from some mild sibling envy, they seem immune to the mindfuck and reveal of parental betrayal.

Luckily everything ends up happily-ever-after. At least one of the girls has started calling Lucy ‘mom,’ and Dru takes off with all the minions to continue the family tradition of villainy – since Gru has gone over to the bland side.

This movie feels like they just selected a pile of movie devices from a dart-board contest and then strung the plot together like an improv sketch.

QUICK: Improve a story using:

• Orphans who have outlived their usefulness
• Jokes about rural Eastern European farming villages
• Pigs and mud pratfalls
• Sibling envy
• Parent Traps / twins separated at birth
• New wife trying to win the love of their step-children
• Redemption-after-layoffs
• Nickelodeon child star as an adult
• 1985’s ‘follow that bird’ but replace Big Bird with about a thousand Minions
• America’s got talent competition
• A jailbreak
• Tourist accidentally gets engaged

Don’t over-think it. None of the individual parts have to connect with each other or form a coherent plot. Just MAKE A MOVIE: GO!

The end credits haven’t finished rolling and I’ve already forgotten the plot to this movie again.