Metacritic reviews

It’s an if-it-ain’t-broke-then-don’t-fix-it approach that works just fine if you’re simply looking to take another ride on the rollercoaster.

Yes, Despicable Me 3 is unwieldy, but it mostly works, as co-directors Pierre Coffin (who also voices the Minions) and Kyle Balda never lose sight of the film’s emotional center, packing the rest with as much humor as they can manage.

Thanks to the charming nature of the characters and their genuine good heartedness, Despicable Me 3 manages to be an entertaining enough film to feel like a decent continuation of the previous two chapters.

The third Despicable Me film chronologically is also the third-best in terms of quality. But it has just enough energy and flashes of inspiration to suggest it’s a franchise that could run and run.

Despicable Me 3 will certainly keep the younger elements of its audience happy, with its dose of aspartame-rush hyperactivity. But for everyone else it may prove decent rather than captivating.

The brothers' mission is like a Spy vs. Spy strip crossed with a Friz Freleng Pink Panther cartoon.... It’s consistently funny, with the kind of well-orchestrated slapstick moments where you can actually feel the stick slap.

One more pan dipped into the Supervillain Gru goldmine shows this Illumination franchise is a claim that’s petered out, with no fresh ideas — no funny ones, anyway.

In the end, though, the movie’s superior craftsmanship can’t overcome its aura of joylessness.

Despicable Me 3 suffers both from a lack of new ideas – there are no memorable gags or action set-pieces, just a lot of flying about and yelling – and from an assumption that the audience is already invested enough to care about what happens.

Two Steve Carells most assuredly aren’t better than one in Despicable Me 3, a winded sequel which is cloying when it isn’t exhaustingly frenetic.