Despicable Me
Studio: Universal Pictures
Rated: PG
Cast: Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Kristen Wiig and Will Arnett
Director: Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin
WorkNameSort: Despicable Me
Our Rating: 1.00

In its first feature cartoon since Curious George ‘ well, unless you count Couples Retreat ‘ Universal Studios has made a film so ugly in every respect that it should come with a free ticket to a Toy Story 3 screening to follow immediately just so audiences can wash its stink off of them with something truly great. 

From the studio’s strong-arming of its hottest in-house talent ‘ tons of Universal golden-boy Apatow’s players are recruited, along with Uni talent from NBC’s The Office, Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock ‘ to the super-sized jumbotron bearing its network’s peacock logo, the production begins right off the top with the distinct odor of a synergistic favor. 

The CG animation bears the stale look of late-1990s DreamWorks throwaways (despite its reported budget of over $100 million), all in service of a paper-thin plotline, lowest-common-denominator gags and a gooey center that fakes its soul with blatant ‘awwwâ?� moments. When you’re forced to make people care about a film’s characters by having a cute little girl constantly remind us that she’s an unloved orphan, you’re scraping the mucky underside of the bottom of the barrel. 

The film, for what it’s worth, gives us Gru, a cranky, unfortunate-looking evil mastermind whose nefarious plots have lost their flair. When a rookie, the geeky and cocky Vector, grabs his headlines with ‘wildâ?� stunts like the stealing of the Great Pyramid (an opening set piece that never pays off with any explanation), Gru concocts a plan to steal Vector’s shrink ray in order to steal the moon. (He has a space shuttle handy.) 

In order to break into Vector’s heavily guarded lair, Gru recruits three little girls from the local orphanage by pretending to adopt them (hilarious!). He envisions the tykes, surrounded by pixie dust and frolicking in slow motion, distracting Vector with Girl Scout cookies while Gru sneaks by unnoticed. Did that sentence give you the creeps? Just wait until you see it played out on the big screen â?¦ or, better yet, don’t. 

By way of playing at the carnival, reading them bedtime stories with puppets and the girls’ friendship with Gru’s adorable alien Oompa-Loompas, the wide-eyed Annies melt his heart, and Gru is forced to rethink his dastardly ways. Despicable Me is so bad-natured that Gru even recaps the events of the movie at the end with a self-written bedtime story; it’s a last-ditch pitch meeting for kids. ‘Now ask your parents to go buy you a Gru plush, kiddies.â?�  

The culprits behind the scenes come as no surprise: The script is by the hideous team of Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul, who previously unleashed The Santa Clause 2 and Horton Hears a Who! upon the world, and Despicable Me was co-directed by first-timer Pierre Coffin and peripheral Ice Age contributor Chris Renaud. The most telling aspect of this disaster is that its high-profile stars attempt to mask themselves entirely with pointless ‘funny accents.â?� Steve Carell goes vaguely Eastern European for Gru, Russell Brand does a John Cleese impersonation with Gru’s confidante, Dr. Nefario, and Jason Segel as Vector â?¦ well I’m not entirely sure what he was thinking. Considering Judd Apatow just signed a big deal with Universal, perhaps they all had the same thing in mind: keep Daddy happy. 

This article appears in Jul 7-13, 2010.