“Despicable Me 2” features some big names. Steve Carrel, Kristen Wiig and Russell Brand headline the cast but the real stars are the nameless Minions who do most of the heavy lifting in this funny children’s flick.
The follow up to the 2010 hit, “Despicable Me 2” sees chrome-domed former villain Gru (Steve Carell)—his days of trying to vaporize Mt. Fuji are behind him now—as a doting single father lured back into the life, but this time working for the Anti Villain League with partner and love interest Agent Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig). The pair are sent undercover to a mall where one of the merchants is storing a chemical that will turn your average everyday Minion into an unbeatable fighting machine.
The trick is to figure out who is the bad guy.
Could it be the mustachioed hairstylist at the Eagle Hair Club or the salsa-dancing owner of the Mexican Restaurant who bears an uncanny resemblance to El Macho, a super villain thought to have perished riding a shark strapped with dynamite into a volcano?
Despite the humdrum story “Despicable Me 2” is great fun. The predictable plot could have written itself, but the inventive gags contained within are the reason to take the whole family. The animation is excellent and returning directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud take pains to make the most of the visual gags.
A bug-eyed guard chicken, a Lipstick Taser toting agent and Gru’s vaguely menacing accent are worth a look and listen, but the movie belongs to the Minions.
The memorable Minions—Gru’s yellow, jellybean shaped helpers—are back, spicing up the movie with their own special kind of anarchy. Speaking in gibbertish, they’re fun, frivolous and worth the extra few bucks to enjoy in 3D (stay for some more fun during the final credits).
“Despicable Me 2” is silly good fun, the rare sequel that is zanier and more enjoyable than the original.
Your enjoyment of “Arthur,” the remake of the 30 year old Dudley Moore comedy, is in direct ratio to your enjoyment of Russell Brand. His brand of Brit-speak verbal diarrhea works in small doses, the trick here is to see whether audiences will sit through two hours of word-play rivaled only by Charlie Sheen on a crack fuelled internet rant. Brand is Arthur Bach the ne’re-do-well heir to an enormous fortune. He’s a womanizing playboy, a drunk man-child whose nanny (Helen Mirren) describes as “merely shaped like an adult.” When his “savant-ish gift for defying death with fun” embarrasses his mother she brings down the hammer. Either he straightens up and marries the beautiful but all-business Susan or be disinherited. Trouble is, he`s in love with Naomi (Greta Gerwig) a charismatic Grand Central Station tour guide.
“Arthur Redux” isn’t an improvement on the original, but it isn’t a waste of time either. Brand is front and center here, chewing the scenery as though he hasn’t eaten in years. For the first hour he delivers every line as if it was a punch line, which would be OK if they were all actually punch lines, but they’re not. Brand, like the character he’s playing here, isn’t nearly as charming as he thinks he is and even though he hits the mark 40% of the time, the delivery gets tired. Luckily the movie improves when it takes a turn for the touching. The Naomi love story works because of Greta Gerwig’s natural charisma and once Mirren’s character actually becomes a character and less a sounding board for Brand’s antics, she adds some depth to the story.
“Arthur” isn’t going to erase the original from people’s minds—it’s a tad too long and a titch too predictable—but its mix of comedy and romance is almost as intoxicating as whatever Arthur swigs out of his ever-present flask. And it’s worth it to see Helen Mirren in a Darth Vader mask.
