Despicable Me 2

Despicable Me 2 (2013) takes the Gru who became a father at the end of the first film and gives him a job and a date. He has given up villainy, is raising his three girls, and makes jam. The Anti-Villain League recruits him to find a serum stolen from a shopping mall. He is paired with an agent named Lucy, and the film becomes a spy comedy and a romantic comedy at once. The real business is the Minions. They were a side element in the first film; here they move to the centre of the narrative, and the franchise was largely built on them from this point on. The language the Minions speak is not random babble. It contains English, Spanish, French, Italian, Hindi and Japanese words, which is why it sounds familiar even when you cannot follow it. More interesting: the Minions are voiced by one of the film's directors. Pierre Coffin directs and also performs hundreds of them himself. The story is weaker than the first film; the villain and the serum plot are forced. What holds it up are the sections involving Gru's eldest daughter, where the feeling of the first film continues. It runs 98 minutes. Good for: family viewing, animation, and comedy. Comfortable with small children. Less good for: the humour is repetitive and loud, and anyone looking for the emotional weight of the first film will not find it.