‘Despicable Me 3’ film review: The laughs keep coming but the movie lacks an emotional core

The standout sequences of the third instalment in the Despicable Me franchise feature the super-villain called Balthazar Bratt (voiced by South Park co-creator Trey Parker) who is a disgruntled star of a cancelled television show from the 1980s. His fashion sense has been stuck in that decade, with shoulder pads and spiked hair, and the dance moves he busts out as through heists and battles are straight out of a cheesy music video.

After reuniting Lucy (Kristen Wiig), Gru (Steve Carell), the kids and the Minions at the end of the last movie, Despicable Me 3 splits them up. Lucy tries to bond with the girls and become a mother to them, the Minions are annoyed that Gru is no longer a villain and quit.

Meanwhile, Gru discovers that he has a twin brother called Dru (also voiced by Steve Carell), a flamboyant blond-haired wannabe-villain who could never live upto the expectations of their super-villain father. The duo attempt to steal the world’s largest diamond from Bratt’s clutches, Gru to get back into the good graces of the anti-villain league and Dru to finally be able to show some true super-villain credentials.

The set-pieces continue to be inventive, the Minions are still endlessly watchable but have little to do, and while each of their sub-plots are enjoyable on their own, a wacky quality gets lost in the separation. The characters work better as a team than as a bunch of disparate elements. Four films down, counting the Minions film, also tempers the newness of the material.

Much of original cast and crew of the Despicable Me franchise, including Carell, director Pierre Coffin, and writers Cinco Paulo and Ken Daurio, remains unchanged in the third instalment and works like a well-oiled machine. The little girls bring in the requisite dose of adorable charm, the Minions provide much-needed hijinks and the film is chockfull of colourful and hugely enjoyable sight gags. The key element missing from what is unlikely to be the final part in the multi-billion dollar franchise is an emotional core, that made the first film so successful.