"I miss being evil."
One of the strengths of the first Despicable Me was the use of strong themes such as parenthood, super-villainy and redemption, whereas this sequel finds these replaced by more lightweight takes on romance and an underdeveloped undercover/spy thread. However, the other main strengths of the original - the Minions and Steve Carell's wonderful Gru - work terrifically again, with the Minions getting much more screen time and most of the laughs (and two genius musical numbers at the end), and Carell displays voice work of consistently high quality, as does Kristen Wiig, even if her character shifts from feisty equal in the early stages to 'love interest needing to be rescued' by the end. Even if the scale feels slightly smaller (the shopping mall setting is somewhat underwhelming) and the content rather bland and universally small-child-friendly, the slapstick and general pace rarely flags, making Despicable Me 2 good sweet solid entertainment, but never breaking out into greatness.
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