My friend Barbara and I went a free advanced screening of the new animated film, DESPICABLE ME, a few days before it opened. I wanted to see it because of the teaser trailer featuring the two yellow minions playing with the moo can toy. I'm sure folks must have seen it on YouTube or something, with the yellow dude tipping the cow-painted can over to hear it moo and giggling about it...yeah, that made me want to see this. Plus, it was a free screening. And, if the movie had been all about the minions that I thought were so funny in the teaser, it could have been awesome.

Instead, they are used for comedic effect while there's a plot about two competitive villains, three orphan girls getting adopted, and an attempt to steal the moon. At least they were funny...I especially liked the ones used for weapons testing and the glow stick joke. There is also a bit at the end during the credits where minions compete to see who can reach out the furthest from the edge of a non-descript white shelf, in 3D. Its one of two good uses for the 3D, the other a rollercoaster ride at a cliffside amusement park.

Steve Carrell is the voice of Gru, an aging villain who has a basement full of minions and a plan to steal the moon. When his chief rival, Vector, voiced by Jason Segel, steals the shrink ray that Gru himself stole from a secret Asian laboratory, Gru's attempts to get the weapon back fail miserably, in Looney Tunes fashion. After being shot at by missiles from the top of Vector's fortress, Gru sees three orphan girls get the gate open by offering to sell cookies.

Gru decides to adopt the girls, so they can help him steal the shrink ray back from Vector by delivering robotic cookies.

The girls, once they are living with Gru, find the minions and the basement hideout, and hijinks ensue while Gru carries out his plans and learns how to be a family man. And that's saying a lot, considering the movie opens with him finding a child crying over lost ice cream, makes him a balloon animal, and pops it in the kid's face.

There are also flashbacks to Gru's unhappy childhood, explaining his fixation with the moon, with Julie Andrews providing the voice of Gru's verbally abusive mother.

Russell Brand provides the voice for Dr. Nefario, the hard of hearing scientist who makes the weapons for Gru, including the fart gun when Gru asks for a dart gun.

DESPICABLE ME isn't Pixar or Dreamworks, and the high level of quality set by those two studios shows the low quality used here. If you are going to have a character that always wears a scarf, and that character is standing on the wing of a plane that flying at a high rate of speed, maybe you should animate some movement to the scarf, instead of keeping it flat against the character's chest and shoulders.

There are still a few questions I have about the movie...how did Vector steal the Pyramid of Giza in the first place? Why would the three girls have to be adopted together? Are they related? If Gru has an army of minions that seem to get the job done, why aren't more of his heists successful? Were those supposed to be real people, perhaps debtors, holding up the pillars in the Bank of Evil?

The music in the film is very kid friendly, sugary pop that you won't hear on the radio any time soon. Thank God.

At an hour and a half, the movie is a bit long for what was going on, but it may keep kids entertained. And DESPICABLE ME is definitely a children's' film, with only a couple of jokes for the parents in the crowd.

There weren't any trailers before the movie, but there was a freebie - a Minion game card for kids, with a maze, crossword & such on the back of a card shaped like one of the two-eyed minions.

I've read at AICN that there is already a sequel in the works, which I have no interest in, and shorts for the Minions, which I would love to see.