Has Gru always been a government agent?  I still haven’t seen Despicable Me 1, 2 or 3, so I’m at a disadvantage when it comes to grasping the nuances of this franchise.  I did see Minions: The Rise of Gru, where a grade school-aged Gru helped the Anti Villain League (or AVL) capture bad guys of his own free will.  Given how Despicable Me 4 shows that Gru is still in kahoots with “the man”, describing him as “despicable” is such a misnomer.  He may be irritable and occasionally get into mischief, but his heart is in the right place.  With that in mind, perhaps the time has come to give these movies a more appropriate name, like Disagreeable Me?  Or Dyspeptic Me?  Cranky but Admirable Me?  If anyone at Illumination Studios is reading this, I offer up these suggestions free of charge.  Consider it a public service.

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A couple of thoughts crossed my mind while watching The Garfield Movie.  The first one was whether any of the small children in the audience knew who Garfield was before seeing this movie.  I became familiar with the character through the comics section of the Sunday newspaper.  Do ten year-olds today know what a comic strip is, let alone a Sunday newspaper?  I doubt that they do.  Social media, specifically TikTok, appears to be the preferred choice for short-form comedy bits these days.  Why would a child ever read a static, three-panel comic strip for a laugh when they can watch countless live-action videos instead?

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In Kung Fu Panda 4, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) tells Po (Jack Black) that he must relinquish the title of Dragon Warrior and find a replacement so that he can become the Spiritual Leader of the Valley.  (You may recall that in the first movie, Master Oogway held that position and passed away after choosing Po as the Dragon Warrior.)  While Shifu insists Po needs to accept his new role in order to continue growing, Po actively resists the change.  Like anyone who has spent a long time doing things himself, he is uncomfortable with being promoted to “management”.  He loves fighting injustice and hanging with the Furious Five and doesn’t want to give either of them up for a role that he doesn’t understand.  (To its credit, the movie does a decent job explaining just what a manager–or Spiritual Leader–actually does.)

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In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are two working-class jamokes from Brooklyn who leave their steady jobs to start their own plumbing business.  When they reveal that they’ve put all of their savings into a corny-yet-catchy television commercial to promote themselves (with stereotypical “a-this and a-that” phrasings) I thought, these guys are living the American dream.  They should be commended for doing something so risky, given how most small businesses fail within the first year.  So when their own family openly derides the brothers at the dinner table for being idiots, I was a bit stunned.  Is this the message we really want the future business owners in the audience to hear?

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