Despicable Me 3

Hollywood loves a good established property – something with characters or a storyline that viewers are already familiar with and eager to see on the big screen. Something with a built-in audience is a far easier sell in Tinseltown than something new you have to explain and convince people to see. So you know – things like Shakespeare, the Bible, Sherlock Holmes, and other classics like Freddy, Jason, Shaft, Indiana Jones, and, of course, Gru and the Minions. This month saw the release of Despicable Me 3, the fourth iteration of Illumination Studios’s money maker if you count the Minions spin-off movie from  2015.

Sequels, prequels, threequels – they all usually share some of the same DNA. New characters, often in the form of spouses, children, or sidekids; more complicated plots and subplots; a spotlight for the standout characters from previous versions; and often an overall dilution of effect. There’s usually more of everything except quality. Regarding Despicable Me 3, check, check, and check.

This time around, we see former super villain, Gru, voiced by Steve Carrel, failing to capture his stuck-in-the-80s nemesis, Balthazar Brat voiced by South Park’s Trey Parker. Gru gets fired from the Anti-Villain League and experiences a mid-life, or perhaps mid-franchise crisis. Meanwhile, his Minions, those sentient little Hostess Twinkie creatures, walk out on him because he refuses to return to villainy, and his new wife, Agent Lucy, struggles with being a step-mom to Gru’s three adopted daughters. Oh, and one of those daughters gets her own subplot about hunting down a pet unicorn. Oh, and his long, lost twin brother, Dru, also shows up to reunite with him and let him know that the father Gru never knew was also a super villain. Oh, and Dru wants Gru to rejoin the old family business. 

 There’s plenty going on, for sure, but none of it is particularly developed. There’s a certain laziness to the writing and characters, and moments aren’t really given a chance to land and settle in. There’s lots of complication but not a lot of depth. For instance, in her efforts to be a tough mom, Lucy accidentally gets her oldest step-daughter engaged to a boy on the Mediterrean island they’re visiting. It involves dancing and eating cheese. (Don’t worry, it doesn’t make a ton of sense in the movie either.) Anyway, Lucy breaks the engagement in about two sentences and her formerly resentful step daughter suddenly loves her. Not a ton of explanation or earning it. It’s basically the writers looking out at us, shrugging, and saying, “You know what we mean though, right?”

It may seem it’s asking a lot to expect fleshed out characters and a developed storyline from a kids’ cartoon, but it’s really not. It’s just that Illumination Entertainment projects don’t really specialize in depth or development. It’s as though they realize they can’t compete with Disney Pixar, so they just don’t really try.

What Despicable Me 3 does excel in, however, is physical comedy. There are numerous sequences that made me laugh out loud strictly from the visuals. Gru and Dru infiltrating the villain’s lair in skin-tight super suits as well as the dance fights between Gru and Balthazar Brat are standouts in particular. It’s banana peel humor, for sure, but what’s wrong with that.

If Disney Pixar is Charlie Chaplin with all longing and pathos along with the humor, then Illumination Entertainment is Buster Keaton, the brazen physical comedy clown embracing the pratfall with gusto.

So this is not a terribly enthusiastic review of Despicable Me 3. It feels more like a glorified tv movie than a summer tent pole. It will make you laugh, but you’ll forget it pretty quickly once it’s over. But it’s pretty much a guarantee that if enough of us go see familiar old Gru and and gang, we can count on a Despicable Me 4 in just a couple of years.

Trouble for Han Solo

If you’re a Star Wars fan, you’ve undoubtedly heard the news over the last week or so that the directors of the standalone young Han Solo spin-off film were abruptly fired with several weeks left in the regular shooting schedule and replaced with veteran director Ron Howard. As a fan both of Star Wars and behind the scenes movie intrigue, I’ve been following the story with great interest.

To offer a little background, once George Lucas sold Lucasflm Ltd. to Disney in 2012, veteran movie producer Kathleen Kennedy was put in charge and immediately started making plans for new movies. Of course, there were the films that would continue the original narrative and tell us more about the Skywalker family but a series of spinoffs was planned as well, among them one about the adventures of smuggler and scoundrel Han Solo when he was a young man.

Lucasfilm’s choice to lead the project was really interesting. The company chose the directing team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Lord and Miller got their start in television but came to real prominence when they directed the animated films, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and  The Lego Movie and the raucous live-action comedies 21 Jump Street and its sequel 22 Jump Street. Lord and Miller were known for being visually inventive, irreverent, and funny. Personally, I found the choice to have them head up the Han Solo movie to be exciting. It signaled that Lucasfilm wanted a contemporary, funny, pop-culture literate take on the character, instead of an overly reverential, too-classic-its-own-good version. 

 Whatever it was Lucasfilm wanted, it apparently did not get it from Lord and Miller because with over a month left of principal photography, they have been given the boot. Replacing directors early in filming isn’t unheard of and bringing in someone to tweak and conduct reshoots at the end is pretty standard. But switching horses midstream is really unusual.

I can see what Lucasfilm execs were thinking. They saw the success of the Russo brothers, another directing pair who got started in tv comedy but then went on to become the primary architects of the Marvel movie shared universe, using their humor and fastworking tv skills to be effective leaders and good storytellers. No doubt, Lord and Miller were expected to have the same kind of success.

Unfortunately, reports from the set reveal two men who #1 wanted to make a slapstick, almost parodic version of Han Solo instead of a serious take with moments of humor and who #2 were overwhelmed by the scope of such a huge project. A recent Hollywood Reporter story details the crew standing around all morning while Lord and Miller sat in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon trying to devise three set-ups for the day when they should have already been halfway through working on twelve to fifteen setups. Lucasfilm boss Kennedy was asking for specific things and Miller and Lord just weren’t giving them. Another part of the story reveals that the crew erupted into applause when it was announced that Ron Howard would take over.

When the story first broke, my first thought was, “What exactly did Lucasfilm think it was getting? If you didn’t want something a little irreverent and funny, why in the world hire Lord and Miller?” But as more of the story came to light, it became clear that it wasn’t just a matter of a few more laughs, but rather an entirely different philosophical take on the project and a matter of getting the job done in the time allotted with the money given.

Ron Howard’s films are usually sleek, professional, and completed on time and under budget. With a few exceptions, they are also usually pretty boring and forgettable. But Lucasfilm needs a camera cranker and bean counter at this point, not an artiste. If the May 2018 release date holds, we’ll see in a little less than a year whether or not we should have a bad feeling about this.