Despicable Me 3 (2017)

There's a moment watching Despicable Me 3 where you realise you're not really watching a film. You're watching a product. A very polished, very expensive product, engineered to sell you something, whether that's a Happy Meal toy, a Minion plushie, or the vague sensation that you've been entertained. And by now, three films deep into this franchise, the gap between sensation and reality has never been wider.

The original had something genuinely warm at its centre. A grumpy, oddball villain who didn't know he needed a family until three small girls crash-landed into his life. I still think Despicable Me (2010) works because it earns its sentiment. It has a reason to exist. This one, by contrast, feels like a pitch meeting that got greenlit before anyone had actually written a story. Gru has a long-lost twin brother. The Minions go off and do their own thing, again. There's an identity crisis. There are jokes. There are set pieces. None of it coheres into anything you'd call a film with a genuine beating heart.

The animation is slick, as you'd expect. The girls are still cute, almost annoyingly so. But slick and cute don't make a film worth your time on their own. The twin brother subplot, which should be the emotional engine of the whole thing, never lands. It's all surface. You're waiting for it to mean something, and it just doesn't. The Minions' side adventure is pure noise, a distraction from a main plot that wasn't exactly gripping to begin with. And if you've sat through Minions (2015) and thought "I need more of this, please," well. This is the film for you.

Here's where I have to be honest about why this gets a 2.5 rather than a flat-out dismissal: Trey Parker. Yes, that Trey Parker, the co-creator of South Park, voicing an absurdly named villain called Balthazar Bratt. A washed-up child star from the eighties, still living in the decade that made him famous, throwing Michael Jackson moves and synth-heavy stings at anyone who gets in his way. It is a genuinely funny concept, and Parker commits to it completely. The ridiculous shoulder pads. The petty, wounded ego barely disguised as menace. The sheer joy he seems to be taking in the whole stupid bit. You can hear him grinning through every line, and that energy, silly, self-aware, oddly heartfelt in its own daft way, is the only thing in the film that feels alive.

When Bratt is on screen, the film remembers it's allowed to have a personality. The satire of faded celebrity, of someone who peaked at twelve and simply refused to update their self-image, is sharper than anything else the script attempts. It's the kind of performance that makes you wish the writers had given him more to do, or honestly, just made a shorter film about him entirely.

But he's not on screen enough. That's the problem. The film keeps cutting away from its best asset to service a plot that exists only to shuffle everyone from one set piece to the next. No real surprise. No genuine risk. No moment where you sit up and think: right, I wasn't expecting that.

Three and a half stars would be too generous. A hard pass would be unfair, because Parker's performance genuinely earns its keep. So 2.5 it is: a film that's occasionally fun and mostly forgettable, kept just barely alive by one voice actor who seems to be the only person in the building having a proper go at it.

If you want the franchise at its best, go back to the start. If you want to see where diminishing returns really set in, Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022) will confirm it for you. But if you're committed to watching this one, at least enjoy Balthazar Bratt. He's doing the Lord's work in an otherwise very ordinary film.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 2017  | Watched: 2025-08-06

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More from Kyle Balda: Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022) · Minions (2015)
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