Despicable Me from Chris Meladandri's Illumination Entertainment opens later today.
Rotten Tomatoes currently gives the Universal release an 80%-plus fresh rating, although Ken Turan of the L.A. Times is less than ecstatic ...
... [W]atching "Despicable Me" can be something of a chore, especially when you factor in a penchant for what the MPAA ratings board characterizes as "rude humor." ....
The trailers I've seen of the movie have all been amusing. But whether DM takes off in the DreamWorks or Pixar manner with its European-flavored animation will be answered by the end of its opening weekend.
My friend the Wise Old Animation Producer told me two weeks ago, "If it takes in thirty-five or forty million, Universal and Meladandri will be ecstatic ..."
Mr. Wise might turn out to be quite prescient:
..."Despicable Me" looks like it will perform well compared with other recent animated films that aren't sequels and don't come from established studios like DreamWorks Animation or Pixar. "The Princess and the Frog" from Disney Animation Studios, which has been in a box office slump, opened to $24 million in December, while Sony Pictures Animation's "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" opened to $30 million in September. ...
... "DM" is set to open to about $35 million in ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada, according to people who have seen pre-release audience polling ...
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7 comments:
Saw it. It's cute--but extremely disposable. A couple of steps above that cheap looking astroboy cartoon. But unlike that film, which was made strictly for very young children, this one tries to go for adults and older kids. It doesn't entirely succeed on a consistant basis. Feels like an extended feature version of that old tv show "The Critic," in that JUST when you get interested in what seems to be the main thrust of the film, they throw in a bunch of random/unrelated gags that distract your interest and dilute any momentum.
The animation is servicable, and the look of the film is about what you'd expect from an international production. The 3D is headache inducing. and not worth any extra money.
There's a LOT worse out there now. I didn't pay for this screening--but if I'd had to, I'd have opted to see Toy Story 3 (in 2D) again.
Astro Boy fan raging in 4...3...2...
They made a movie of Astro Boy...?
Was Despicable Me more mature than The Iron Giant? Because, according to its box-office tally, that only drew in students from Ding Dong School.
Despicable Me is more mature than Iron Giant.
But it's not as good as Astro Boy.
Look: The Astro-Nut is GONE. At least, I'm assuming so; I'm only going by reputation, and haven't been on this board long enough ever to have seen his/her work.
If you're thinking that the raving Boogey-Fan is still lurking somewhere under the bed, or have somehow sublimated long-burning resentments into thinking that whoever compliments one uncharacteristically restrained animated from a sadly promising studio is actually some disingenuous fifth-column support for an annoying lunatic, you might want to get your memos updated.
The only Astro Boy supporters here are the unsolicited ones who have made their own judgments solely on the final product, and wandered onto the battlefield with relative innocence.
Words of one syllable: The goat-getting Astro-bashing is getting OLD.
(But now that Brad Bird's gotten steady work, everyone knows it's only the pathetic fanboys who still talk about the "martying" of Iron Giant.) :)
You're the Astro-nut, but pretending not to be.
Just my theory.
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