A Universal animation that is great fun for the whole family. I know that because I took my overly hyper 4 year old and my equally overly critical 11 year old to see it. The result was they both loved it. To tell you the truth so did I. I guess you can say kid tested and approved. The movie has a good balance of children , adolescence , and adult humor mixed with in the plot. A great moral and feel good ending and some lovable characters . Some of my favorites other then Gru where the nutty professor Dr. Nefario. Gru’s who hearing impaired and keeps bumbling the inventions like the fart gun and the dart gun. You get the idea.And of course the minions who are a bunch of yellowish small creatures that remind me of the  Rayman Rabbids ( if you ever played the game you understand) .

The movie itself has very few moments of boredom and is totally entertaining.  I highly recommend seeing this especially if you are one of those Sci Fi / Fantasy fans that love a good simple movie that has a lot of light hearted story with a good  mix of humor. Oh yea and of course if you can see it in 3D do it to maximize your experience.

This gets a 4 out of 5 star rating in my book

*****

Here is how I broke it down

Family entertainment – 4 stars  –  Great for the whole family but there may be one or two scenes that little one may find offecisive

Animation – 5 stars  –  Great Computer animation

Plot – 4 stars   – Simple but entertaining plot

Script – 4 stars – Again simple but entertaining

Acting – 5 stars – The voice overs were excellent and the actors did a wonderful job with creating voices for their characters.

Here is a simple plot summary that has some spoilers but not enough to give it all away. I tried my hardest to use the KISS (Keep It Simple and Stupid) approach and cut it down from the original 15 paragraphs I originally had.

After the great pyramid of Egypt is stolen by Vector (Jason Segel) the real villain in the movie. A fumbling but lovable super bad guy Gru (Steve Carell)  who  has a following of little minions tries to top that by pulling off the ultimate crime  by stealing the moon.  But he first has to get a loan from the bank of evil formally known as Lehman Brothers (if I saw the sign right) who rejects his bid for a loan . This leaves Gru in  a bad bad mood and on leaving the evil bank zaps Vector with a freeze ray which starts the feud between Vector and Gru. Vector strikes back at Gru by stealing the pivotal shrink ray from him and attempts to steal the moon for himself.

The feud grows as Gru attempts to storm Vectors fortress and fails at every turn. That is until he sees a 3 girls (Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Elsie Fisher)) that come from a home for homeless girls selling cookies and succeed to get past all Vectors security. With an idea to twart Vector Gru adopts the 3 girls to help him carry out his mission. He plans on using them to deliver cookies that are robots in disguise. Once inside the fortress the cookies transform into robots and proceed to take down the defenses to the fortress and allow Gru to steal the shrink ray.

During this transition Gru starts to find himself growing more and more attached to the girls and becoming less and less evil. He manages to steal the moon but Vector kidnaps the girls leaving him to make a trade. When the moon is in his hands he goes back on his deal and escapes both with the moon and the girls and Gru on hot on his heels. Meanwhile the shrinking effect on the moon starts to wear off and the moon starts to grow. Leaving Gru to rescue the girls and rescuing the earth and becoming the good guy in the end.

I left much out of this on purpose because the rest I leave to you to see for yourself.