First Impressions; Despicable Me, Sandy Cheeks and Ultraman

I have to wonder, at what point can we call a year "Bad" for something, like did people decide that 1980 was the worst year of Pop Music in 1980 or only after a few years have gone by? It's easy to say that 2024 is a mediocre year for animated movies now, but we're just over half-way through, but like, what really has there been animation wise? 2023 was a pretty empty year for animated releases, but at least there were good movies released then. 2023 was no 2022, but it had some good stuff, but what has their been for 2024? There's been Inside Out 2, Which I still have yet to get to, and Kung Fu Panda 4, which seems to have gotten a mixed reception. It's telling when the best animated movies released are sequels and a documentary about a notoriously bad animated movie. Still, we have some new releases to talk about, so maybe we'll see something good?

Despicable Me 4
Released: July 3, 2024
Portion Written: July 28, 2024

I mean… it’s an illumination movie, what more needs to be said? Okay, that is a bit unfair, it's not like Illumination makes movies that aren't worth talking about, it's just... I feel like all my major problems with this movie are the same problems I have with the rest of Illuminations line-up that I've seen, it's just not trying to be anything that great. Granted, this is probably on the lesser side quality wise, and that mostly falls to the story. There is just too much going on, and a lot of stuff that just doesn't really get much of a resolution. The kids have a Karate class and that goes nowhere, the wife becomes a hair-stylist and that goes nowhere, the Minions become super-powered and that also really goes nowhere despite it being the most advertised aspect of the movie. I was waiting for them to show up in the climax and when they appeared I was like, "Ah, this is all this subplot is going to amount to, alright." I mean seriously, the Minion stuck in the vending machine had a more rewarding pay-off.

I feel like the story would have been better if it was just Gru and Poppy or Gru and Maxime, because I can imagine the former being a fascinating character study of Gru deciding whether he wants to return to being a villain or if he wants to stay with his family, and the latter would be a standard, but fairly entertaining, family-comedy film. Do I think this is the worst animated movie of the year? Honestly, no. Illumination movies just don't really get there for me, again they don't try to achieve greatness, and the benefit to that is that they also never hit absolute failure either. I can't really recommend it, but like... it's pretty innocuous.

And if anything, it got "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" stuck in my head, so thanks for that movie.

Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie
Released: August 2, 2024
Portion Written: August 2, 2024

At least it's better than Sponge on the Run.

Okay, that's a bit harsh, because I'm gonna be honest, I didn't think this movie was awful. There were some gags I actually liked here, even some dumb ones, like they almost felt like classic SpongeBob gags, and I'm not gonna lie, I did like Sandy's family, though I also just like Johnny Knoxville so take that for what it's worth. Is this movie great? No, it does have some issues, some of the effects, most notably the live action mixing were noticeably off and uncanny, the human actors just didn't feel right, the songs aren't really anything I'd want to listen to, I really don't get what the obsession with this stylized Computer Animation is, I think it looks ugly, and the movie is kind of... there. I mean, I wouldn't classify it on the same level as a movie like Mummies, but like, it really isn't something I'd probably come back to, but you know what, it is better than Sponge on the Run. I'll make jokes about its content, like Squidward being a bisexual furry (Only half kidding), but I don't think it's that bad, I can accept this movie's existence as a SpongeBob movie, albeit not a good one. I can't really recommend it on any real level, but like... I can't say I didn't have some enjoyment out of it, I'll go "Slight Recommendation" but take that with a grain of salt.

Ultraman: Rising
Released: June 12, 2024
Portion Written: August 17, 2024 (I watch these sporadically, shut up!)

On some level, I do have to admire this movie. There are elements here I can really appreciate, like the stylized animation, the choice to have a grey morality, honestly even the character relationships and drama I can kind of admire. Despite that though, this is kind of just another one of those movies where I have to ask, "Am I just getting jaded?", because I did kind of peg how a lot of this story was gonna go, for an Ultraman movie, I didn't assume that the movie I was gonna be reminded of most would be Mr. Baseball of all things. Even the animation, though I do recognize it as being of high quality, it often does just come off as Spider-Verse-lite. Still, I can't say this is a bad movie, it's quite well done, it's just, I think I would just rather watch The Sea Beast. I dunno, this was just another movie that failed to grab me, maybe I just had high expectations. Do I recommend it? Yeah, I arguably is one of the best movies I've seen all year, but like... honestly, if this is it, than this year just seems ready to accept the title of "Worst year for animated movies".

The Imaginary
Released: Dec 15, 2023
Netflix Release: July 5, 2024
Portion Written: August 25, 2024

Yet another movie that I just have to ask myself if I'm becoming too jaded or if the movie is just genuinely not that good. Something about this movie just does not entertain me, I dunno, maybe it's how the movie looks, something about the art-style and animation is just not pleasant to me, it's like putting an anime face on a real human head sometimes. Maybe it's the villain, who is holding onto an imaginary friend as an adult, which has a bunch of implications regarding the theme, maybe it's just that I wasn't a huge fan of Spirited Away, that could be a factor too. I dunno, something about this film doesn't sit right with me. I guess I'll withhold a full rating for now because, I mean how can I really rate a movie when I can't describe my reaction towards it? This... is a first for First Impressions, a movie I just straight up can't really articulate myself with, bound to happen sometime I guess.

Yeah, this year isn't looking to great for animated films, and if I'm being honest, I'm not really looking forward to the rest of the line-up for this year. We've got Moana 2, Mufasa: The Lion King, and The Wild Robot, and honestly, I'm most dreading The Wild Robot. Hopefully I'm wrong on that one, but I dunno, this year's track record has been unimpressive so far. I don't even know if I'll be able to do a best list... maybe a "Movies that weren't complete trash" list... I'll think of something.

Two Forgotten 1990s Cartoons; Calamity Jane and Sherlock Holmes

So I've talked about Tubi before, it's another streaming service, but this one specializing in... well let's call it what it is, crap. Tubi is full of stuff that would most likely be pretty cheap to acquire the rights to, and as I have said before, ease of access and quality tend not to go hand-in-hand. That being said, Tubi isn't all full of bad stuff, sure it's where I watched The Misty Green Sky, but I also watched The Point on the service, as well as two shows that have been partially forgotten, and those two shows were quite frankly, not bad at all.

A large part of my interest in media history is wondering why things turned out the way they did, and in this case, why these shows didn't become more popular. So, I wanted to give these shows a sort of review and talk about why I feel they didn't take off, and hopefully give them some more attention. These two cartoons are 1997's The Legend of Calamity Jane, and 1999's Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century.

The Legend of Calamity Jane

I'll start with The Legend of Calamity Jane because I watched that one first. I remember ages ago looking at videos from what used to be Channel Awesome, which used to be That Guy With The Glasses. I was fond of many of the creators on that platform, Todd in the Shadows, Linkara, and Suede, formerly That Dude in the Suede. I remember Suede did a video about the Top 11 American Anime Shows, or American cartoons that were heavily anime inspired, and while you had some expected entrees, Samurai Jack, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Ben 10, there were some more obscure stuff on the list. Number eleven specifically was The Legend of Calamity Jane, and I remember looking up the show on YouTube, this was back when I believe there was a limit on how long your videos could be, and so the available episodes had to be split into parts. Good times... no they weren't.

The series was actually considered Lost Media for a longtime, but in March 2023, yes it was that recent, the entire series has been available on Tubi, all thirteen episodes, and I was excited to finally finish the series that I had started all those years ago, and I'll be honest, I had a really good time.

The show is a heavily fictionalized take on the real like Calamity Jane, and I'm just gonna say this now, if you really don't like the mythologization of the Wild West, y'know stuff like Tombstone, that kind of mythologization, this may not be the show for you, but I think it is pretty upfront with the idea that this is a fictional version, I mean I'm certain that the real Calamity Jane didn't have this long, blood red hair. Basically it's kind of your typical "villain of the week" kind of show, there's a crime Jane needs to solve, she fights the crooks, Jane wins. It's not entirely a wholly unique show, but that isn't a bad thing, especially if you're not wholly unique in the best dang decade for animation prior to the 2010s.

The Legend of Calamity Jane clearly took a lot of influence from the DC superhero shows at the time, Batman especially. That is also very much in tone, though it never got as dark as Batman did, it wasn't afraid to go into heavier places. The first episode begins with a lynching and the final episode has Jane actually coming close to death. Again, it doesn't really get as dark as Batman: The Animated Series did, but I feel a lot of that is more that they didn't have the chance to, rather than they didn't want to. However, there is something else that they took from Batman for this show, the inherent silliness of it. Batman is a silly concept, but we take it seriously because the people who work on it take it seriously, and this show also gets a little silly. Episode two has the villain literally being a Napoleon cosplayer, and the big reveal of episode four is that the villains are triplets.

That all being said, it is a much more serious show than one would anticipate, there are moments, and an entire episode, that do deal with racism, a popular topic of the 90s. Jane often corrects people on using umbrella terms for the native peoples, and episode seven has Jane try to break up a feud between the Blackfoot and a settler who is openly racist.

I feel that one of the other big influences this show took from is very clearly the anime that was starting to become more prominent in the west. I'm not the only one who thinks that the opening sequence of this show is kind of similar to Cowboy Bebop, which wouldn't reach America until a few years after. You can see this in the animation, which looks great, despite the drab colour pallet. The characters all stand-out from each other, and they're all wonderful. The voice cast is surprisingly good for this show, Barbara Scaff is probably the only "unknown" here, Frank Welker, Michael Horse, Tim Matheson and Clancy Brown are all main actors and they all give great performances. I wonder if Frank Welker has any memory of this show.

So, I really did enjoy my time watching this show, but I do have to admit, I can kind of see why it didn't take off. It really does feel like one of those shows that got lost in the shuffle, I mean why watch this show when you could watch Batman? It kind of sucks, but that's how it be sometimes. Some shows really aren't unique enough to get the attention, but don't confuse that for a lack of quality, this show is well written, well designed and all around just a quality show, I can definitely give it a High Recommendation from myself.

Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century

I had a similar introduction to this show like I did with Calamity Jane, I watched a video online about "Cartoons that shouldn't be given movies", and this was on that list. Intriguing concept, I must admit, Sherlock Holmes being resurrected into the 22nd Century is a fun idea. I was never really that curious about this show, or maybe it was just that by the time I heard of this show I had learned it was more trouble than it was worth to try and watch forgotten cartoons on YouTube. Like I said, those were not good times.

While I believe that it was simply the fact that it was like other shows at the time is the reason The Legend of Calamity Jane didn't really have the chance to get popular, I think the main reason this show didn't really become popular is because, well... It isn't bad, but I don't really think it's that great, it really did feel like one of those shows you would watch because nothing else you liked was on. It kind of, doesn't really have much of an identity to itself, it's just Sherlock Holmes, except in the 2100s, and that's is kind of the biggest problem with the show.

Each episode is predominantly based on an existing Sherlock Holmes story, and I'm not against that on principle, this show would be someone's entry point into the franchise so I could understand the episodes being adapted from existing stories. The problem is that, not one episode is a truly original mystery, and that does kind of mean that there really isn't much to truly take advantage of the setting. It's just, here's flying cars and robots, and the Hounds of the Baskervilles is now taking place on the Moon, it's not really taking advantage of the entire premise. I could imagine a cyberpunk style Sherlock Holmes, which I guess this was trying to be, but it's not very good cyberpunk.

And speaking of robots, Watson this time around is a robot with a mask, and it is uncanny and frankly kind of gross. It's tolerable when Watson has a coat on, but whenever he is coatless, it's a human head on a robot body and it just looks wrong. Futurama got away with it because their human heads are in jars, so when Nixon is on a robot body, it still looks robotic enough to not be entirely wrong. That being said, he isn't a bad character, I don't think any of the characters here are bad, though Sherlock himself is a bit of an arrogant prick, but he has the abilities to back it up, so whatever. We also have a new Lestrade, Inspector Beth Lestrade, she's hot-headed and often frustrated with Holmes, but there is mutual respect between the two, and I really only mean respect, I did not pick up any chemistry between Holmes and Lestrade beyond work-partners. I guess that is a limitation of the premise though, that we can't really see what everyone gets up to when they aren't solving mysteries.

The animation also isn't that spectacular. It doesn't look bad, most of the time, the 2D animation looks nice, but the 3D integration is pretty rough. It looks okay on the buildings and vehicles, but in other places it is really dated. Which is to be expected from a series that lasted from 1999 until... 2001? Wait, how can that be? This series lasted thirteen episodes right? Actually it lasted twenty-six, it's just that thirteen are what is available on Tubi.

So a lot of my complaints with this show do seem the stem from the limited availability of the remaining episodes, it does appear that full DVD releases of the series do exist, but I can't imagine they'd be easy to find, or cheap. The other question is if they are worth looking for and honestly, yeah, I can kind say they are. This show does have flaws, but I did really get into the mystery elements of the show, I was eager to see how all the clues and deductions would fit together, and I do think that is really the key to any great mystery. I think the main problem was that above all else, the show does have some wasted potential, but for what we do have, I can't say I disliked it. I'm gonna give this a Recommendation.

Honestly, I am kind of glad that these shows are being given the chance to earn a larger audience, even if it is on a service nobody uses. The Legend of Calamity Jane is especially one I'm glad is available to watch because I could really see it garnering the reputation of an underappreciated gem. Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century is an interesting premise that I would love to see taken advantage of more than the show did. Overall, I think both shows are worth checking out, and hopefully I'll have someone else to talk about Calamity Jane with.

The Point! (1971) - A Fascinating Piece of Seventies Animation

The 1970s has kind of a reputation when it comes to animation. See, American animation wasn't doing so well this decade for a number of factors including television censorship and Disney was still trying to figure out what to do after Walt Disney himself died. This isn't to say that the decade was devoid of good, or even great American animation, and this decade did give us a lot of unique pieces, like Ralph Bakshi's take on The Lord of the Rings or Richard Williams' Raggedy Ann & Andy movie. However, the decade had plenty of low-points, I won't deny that, but I think it is fair to also point out some of the higher points in animation... uh, no pun intended. Anyway, this time I'm looking at the 1971 Television Movie, The Point, because... I think it's an interesting piece of animation, and it's available on Tubi.

The story is read by a father to his son, the father serves as our narrator for the story of Oblio, a kid born in the land where everything has a point, literally, everything is pointed, except for Oblio. After he beats the Count's Son at a game, the Count calls upon a tribunal to exile Oblio to the Pointless Forest, but as Oblio explores the forest, he finds that it might not be as pointless as it's named. The film is an adaptation of the 1970 studio album of the same name by Harry Nilsson, and the plot is not all the dissimilar to Yellow Submarine, in that a lot of it is mostly just there to take you from one musical segment to the next. It ain't bad though, I also really like the themes of the story, Oblio ascribing a point to everything even when he's told it's pointless, and there are even some underlying themes at the beginning, with Oblio being exiled for how he was born, one could make the connection between this film and the struggles that people in minority communities, ethnic minorities, disabled and LGBTQIA+ groups especially, have to endure.

I also have to comment on the musical sequences, because they are very unique. This film was done in the early seventies, so the sixties wasn't completely over yet, in a cultural sense really, so you get a lot of bizarre, trippy almost avant-garde musical sequences. That Yellow Submarine comparison wasn't just made for no reason, there was a point to it (Pun intended), because this movie is kind of Yellow Submarine-Lite, and you can see that in the animation. While I love the musical sequences, the animation is very obviously seventies quality, flat colours are everywhere, character designs are pretty basic, lip sync is more like lip-stuttering, basically it looks like what you would imagine a made-for-TV movie from the 1970s would look like. I can't say it's ugly though, on the one hand, I've seen ugly, but on the other hand, it doesn't look unappealing, I never wanted to look away or hated looking at this movie at any point. I dunno, I guess it's middle ground, not great animation, but I have seen way worse.

The characters are pretty charming. Oblio does feel like a real kid, he's curious, kind and interested in the world around him. Seeing as he is the character we spend the most time with, it is good that he has some personality. The other oddities Oblio meets are interesting too, a Rock Man, a Leaf Man who produces leaves to sell, and The Pointed Man, all of their scenes are fascinating. I also should give credit to the voice actors, and a lot of these voice actors are iconic names, golden age voices like Paul Frees, June Foray, Lennie Weinrib and Joan Gerber, these are definitely names that any fans of animation and animation history would, or at least should know, and they are all excellent in their roles, even if Paul Frees has nearly half of the entire cast of characters to voice. Plus, Ringo Starr narrating this version of the movie is a treat, there are other broadcast versions narrated by folks like Dustin Hoffman and Alan Thicke, but Starr's narration is what is available on the Home Release version.

The Point really is a fascinating film, it's one of those productions that you don't really see to often, a unique specimen of music and animation. I can't say it's as strong as Yellow Submarine, but I think it is a much more digestible version, something that kids could watch without being too weirded out. It's another movie that really has a lot of charm to it, charming characters, animation, and plot, but it's really the themes of the story that I think hold this movie together the best. I do think this is something that any animation fan really needs to see, the themes of having a point, I feel, can also reach people on a deeper level, something more philosophical, and beyond that, it's available on Tubi, and probably elsewhere online, so the only real cost is about an hour and fourteen minutes of your time. I can definitely recommend this movie, I think it absolutely deserves to be looked at as more than a curio from the lesser era of American Animation.

El Apóstol; The First Animated Feature and What It Could Have Been Like to Watch It

 

The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the oldest surviving animated feature, however, animated cinema has existed for an entire decade before. In 1917, Argentine animator Quirino Cristiani put together El Apóstol, or The Apostle, released in Buenos Aires on November 9th, the film was a political satire that featured the Argentine President of the time Hipólito Yrigoyen, and it was well received by critics at the time. It had  some controversy, and the film was made with cutout animation. The movie is also completely lost, as most of Cristiani's work was destroyed in two separate fires, with El Apóstol being destroyed in a 1926 fire at the studio of the film's producer, Federico Valle. Lost media is truly fascinating, because you have to use your imagination to really figure out what it could be like, so I thought it would be fun to imagine, take some guess work, speculate even.

The big thing that needs to kept in mind is that, this movie is directly influenced by Argentine history, or Argentine Current Events at the time. So in order to really guess at what this movie could have been like, I have to answer a few questions; Who was Hipólito Yrigoyen? And the most important one, what is the plot of this movie? I'll be honest, Argentinian history is not entirely my forte, I don't even know which things I should refer to as Argentine or Argentinian, needless to say I am a bit out of my depth here, but I wanted to speculate and talk about lost media and animation history, so that's what I'll be doing now.

So, first question; Who was Hipólito Yrigoyen?

Hipólito Yrigoyen, was the two-time president of Argentina, serving from 1916 until 1922, and then again in 1928 and 1930. He was of the Radical Civic Union, or Unión Cívica Radical, which is a Centrist and Liberal political party in Argentina. Yrigoyen was first to be elected under the Sáenz Peña Law, which guaranteed secret and compulsory voting. He was also a nationalist president, convinced that Argentina had to have control of it's transportation, energy and oil, as well has manage its own currency. He also decided to keep Argentina out of World War I and was nicknamed Peludo, which translates of "Furry" or "Armadillo"? Someone correct me on that. Things didn't entirely go well as his second term ended in a military coup in the September Revolution, which was mostly started when the Yrigoyen government took power from the legislature and cut off support for the Conservative, and this lead to what is called the "Infamous Decade", why does world history have to be so messy and problematic? Okay, I think I'm making this more complicated than I should be, to put it basically, Yrigoyen was the leader of the Radical Party in Argentina, and was outed in his second term in 1930.

With that context, what is the plot of El Apóstol?

So I am basically going to be reading the plot summary off of Wikipedia here, I would have loved to read the books Wikipedia cited, those would be Giannalberto Bendazzi's 1995 book "Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation" and his 2017 book "Twice the First - Quirino Cristiani and the Animated Feature Film", however I am unable to read or acquire either book at the moment. I do apologize for this, I would love to do a more thorough detailing of this topic, because it deserves proper detailing, but I have limits, and a lot of that is budget and availability. I won't quote Wikipedia word for word, but I'm going to be fully transparent here. Maybe I'll rewrite this if I get a chance to read those books.

Anyway, as said before, El Apóstol is a satire based on Hipólito Yrigoyen, dubbed "El Peludo", where he has a dream about speaking with the gods of Olympus and using Zeus' lightning bolt to destroy Buenos Aires, cleansing it of immorality and corruption. I imagine this would have been a very dialogue heavy movie, because I skipped over a bit of stuff, but the gist is there. So this begs the question, what is the movie really saying?

I think this is where my limited resources can bite me in the butt here, because the small Wikipedia summary only gives me that, the summary. I have to wonder if the movie is portraying Yrigoyen as having delusions of grandeur or as being reckless and careless, maybe both? Maybe it's saying that his goals are only possible in his dreams, or that he will end up destroying Argentina? I think the only way I could really know for certain is if I saw it in Argentina at the time.

That brings me to my ultimate conclusion, I don't think I would like El Apóstol if I saw it today. There is a certain disconnect between me and Argentinian politics and history that I feel would really keep me from understanding this movie. It kind of reflects my views on Momotaro, which my affection for was entirely based around its historical significance, rather than it being a great, or even a good movie. Momotaro was also propaganda that reflected the views and political scene at the time, and likewise there is a pretty decent disconnect between then and now, and I believe there is probably a bigger disconnect between American audiences and Argentina than there is with Japan.

Should El Apóstol be found? Well I think it's unlikely it will be found, the only known copy of the movie was destroyed in a fire in the 1920s, but if there is a chance, I do think it is worth uncovering, again for the historical significance more than anything else. That being said, I can't help but think that maybe it's not a bad thing we can't watch this movie. It's practically mythology at this point, and seeing the reality would probably destroy a lot of that. I can't imagine this movie is something that would really resonate with modern audiences, either outside of or within Argentina, but at the same time it would give us a look at animation history and Argentinian history, so maybe it would have some value at the end of the day.

This was a big effort for me, and I can't say I'm super satisfied with the end result, but I got to stop working on it at some point, or I'll just keep working on it until I die. If I get the opportunity I'll probably revisit this topic in the future, but right now, I hope I spread a little knowledge about animation history, and I can safely say, I will never do a blog like this again.

Despicable Me (2010) - A Standard, but Endlessly Charming Movie

 

So... There is a fourth Despicable Me movie out. Honestly, I'm kinda shocked they even made a second one, but that was the 2010s, I was younger, dumber and not really in a good place. I never actually watched any of the Despicable Me movies until I saw Minions: The Rise of Gru, and that movies was... I mean it wasn't awful. I have been curious about Despicable Me, it is kind of a big thing in animated cinema and I have been meaning to check it out, but it has never been very high on my list because... I hate Illumination studios, but there's the fourth movie out now and it was available on streaming for me so why not?

Despicable Me follows Gru, a super-villain, as he plans to steal a shrink ray in a plot to steal the Moon, however another villain by name of Vector steals the ray from him, and Gru enlists the help of three orphaned girls to get in back, but he finds he gets more than the Shrink Ray. I'm going to be honest, I can't really say this is a great movie story-wise, like it hits familiar beats and you know what direction it's gonna go. Like, you just know that there is going to be something important on the same day he needs to do his moon heist, you know there is going to be a third act break-up, like it's all fairly straight forward. Despicable Me does get away with it though, firstly because this is Illuminations first feature production, but mostly because it is just so charming. People might scoff at the idea of "charm" taking something far, but the entire point of the entertainment industry is to primarily be entertaining, and charm can be a major part of entertainment value.

A lot of it is down to the characters, and the found family trope that I am realizing I am much more of a sucker for than I initially thought. Gru and the girls are just charming characters to watch, I want to see them interact, I want to see them be a family, I even want to see the turmoil of Gru trying to choose between villainy and fatherhood, I think if the characters weren't as charming and didn't work as well off of each other, the movie would have suffered a lot more. Side characters are also amusing, I guess with the only exception being Vector, not that he's a bad character or even a bad antagonist, but I think I wanted to punch him in the face more than I enjoyed seeing him on screen, and I get that is the main idea, we want to be on Gru's side, but I don't think making him a nepo-baby dork was the right idea. Of course, with Despicable Me, we have to talk about the giant yellow Tic Tacs in the room, the Minions. The Minions have been cited as one of the worst things to ever happen in animation, with constant overexposure and worthless knock-offs in other movies have made the Minions into one of the more disliked aspects of the franchise. Honestly, that's kind of a shame because I actually thought they were tolerable in this movie. Actually, that's not entirely right, the Minions had moments I actually thought were funny, they kind of harkened back to an era of classic slapstick cartoons, and even when I didn't think they were really funny, they were still kind of a cute and charming funny. I think if the Minions hadn't become the mascot for Illumination they might be more accepted.

I do have to give props to the voice cast too, Jason Segel was almost unrecognizable as Vector, Steve Carell was good, and I will always love a Julie Andrews cameo. Plus, I never would have guessed Miranda Cosgrove would translate well in the voice acting booth.

Speaking of the comedy, the movie is kind of mixed. Some jokes I knew were coming, and some did fall flat. That being said, there were some gags that I actually did like, one of my favourites was actually towards the start of the movie where Gru revealed he stole a Jumbotron, I totally expected the screen behind him to show footage of the theft, but then I realized that the screen was the Jumbotron, I don't know why but that gag really caught me off guard. Again though, even when the comedy wasn't laugh-out loud funny, it still had a charm to it. I think my only really complaints with this movie are with the animation and music, not that either is bad, but both are just kind of... standard. I can give some leeway to the animation, again this was their first animated feature, so it's not like I'm expecting Pixar quality right off the bat, but it didn't really have much to it, it was mostly just "This is what we need, don't animate anything else", just getting the job done but not really going above and beyond, which isn't really a criticism that goes away with Illumination, but to be fair they do improve in future movies. As with the music, I just don't think Pharrell Williams was the best choice to sing the theme, like I dunno, I just didn't think his voice was the right fit, but that might just be me.

I have to say, I'm honestly impressed with Despicable Me, I was fully expecting a bog standard, average at best, mediocre at worst family film, but what I got was a genuinely charming film. I don't think I can really call it a great movie, honestly I don't know if I'd even call it "good", but I would be a liar if I said it didn't have its charm. The characters were charming, the story was charming, the comedy had a charm to it, I can't think of many movies I can recommend just on how charming I think they are. I can see why this became a flagship franchise for Illumination. Do I recommend it? Yes, but I think I'll go Slight Recommendation on this one, mostly because charm only does get you so far, but I genuinely think that Illumination made a decent family film here. If only they could do it again.