Despicable Me 2 Review

Despicable Me came out three years ago in the Summer of 2010. I don't know if I actually caught it in theaters, but whenever it was that I first saw it, I immediately fell in love. And the more and more I watched it, the more I liked it. The minions are hilarious, the three girls are really cute and awesome, and the story is intelligent and heart-warming. Normally I don't get too ecstatic over sequels because I think there are way too many sequels nowadays and not enough original movies, but Despicable Me 2  is one sequel that I have been super excited about ever since it was announced and the great thing is that I didn't even have any idea what it was about. The advertising focused almost solely on the minions. Even when the later trailers came out, it turns out the non-minion footage was taken from the first 20 minutes or so of the movie, making the story a complete surprise, which was a plus. I took the opportunity to see the movie as soon as I could and to my great relief, I was not disappointed.

Being that the trailers didn't give away much about the actual movie, I will refrain from doing so in my review. What I will say is that is Despicable Me 2 is very smart in the way it went about things. There are a lot of movies that try to separate themselves from their predecessor, but Despicable Me 2 does the opposite. It takes what was really popular in the first one and uses that as the focus in this one. Namely minions. Minions were a huge part in the advertising, like I mentioned, and they were a huge part of the movie. Minions! Minions! Minions! And of course we have our girls. Agnus is as cute and adorable as ever. Edith is super awesome, running around like a ninja for much of the movie, and being disgusted at romance that is happening. Margo, in the meantime, is growing up. She starts getting involved with boys and Gru is a great father by being quite protective of. Speaking of Gru, we saw him go through huge character development in the first one as he turns from greedy criminal to happy father. In this one he gets faced with another obstacle, but I won't dive in to what that is.

One thing that I was nervous about this one is that they might perhaps go overboard with things. Taking a great formula and repeating it exactly can be something that can sometimes get redundant and annoying, but this time it worked. Just like the first one, the minions were hilarious. I found myself laughing really hard throughout the whole movie at all the stuff the minions did. But that wasn't the only thing that made this great. The girls were fabulous. Gru was fun. The story wasn't anything mindblowing and unpredictable, but it wasn't trying to be. If you look back at the first movie, that one wasn't either, but I'd say overall when compared to the first one, the story was better and the villain was better. I'd say Gru's character progression was better in the first one than this one, but it was still good.

Overall, this is a fantastic family movie that will work well for kids and adults alike and is a perfect outing for the Independence Day weekend. Do I think it was better than the first one? Well, that is honestly hard to say because I totally love the first one, but I will say at the very least it is just as good as the first one and was even better in some aspects, which is a really high praise if you know me. In terms of the best animated movie of the year, I think I will still give the slight edge to The Croods, but that's not a hit against Despicable Me 2 because you will probably see both animated movies show up in my end of year top 10 list. Despicable Me 2 gets a 9 out of 10 from me.