Despicable Me is the new 3-D animated movie by Universal Studios and the first animated feature by Illumination Entertainment (headed by Chris Meledandri, former big wig on the Ice Age movies). The previews have pretty much given everything away and the movie was converted to 3-D because every movie nowadays is converted to 3-D. But was it any good?

The movie wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t that good. The 3-D conversion was useless and added nothing to the movie. The plot was about a super villain named Gru. Gru’s been upstaged by a new villain named Vector and has to steal a shrink ray so he can steal the moon. Only Vector steals the shrink ray from Gru right after Gru steals it. This is where the 3 cute kids come in. Gru can’t get into Vector’s lair, but the 3 cute orphan girls got right in to sell cookies. So Gru hatches a plan to adopt the girls, have his gadgets genius create some programmable cookies and then have the girls deliver the cookies. The cookies will then steal the shrink ray for him and the plan for the moon will continue as scheduled. There are subplots about a banker in the Bank of Evil (formerly Lehman Brothers) and a dance recital.

The movie is predictable and if you’ve seen The Grinch, then you know about about kids making evil people’s hearts grow. So you know how the movie ends. It’s predictable and simple, but not horrible. The kids will enjoy it and the minions are cute and silly. Actually a show simply about the minions would be much more entertaining than any story with Gru. The Universal marketing people realized that a little late in the game, which is why you’ve seen only the minions on the previews and commercials recently when the original plan was to promote Steve Carell and Gru.

Despicable Me isn’t a movie that you should rush out and see, but it’s cute and worth a looksee for a the kids.