Sorry, Pixar. This summer, the bad guys are winning.
Former bad guys, that is. In “Despicable Me 2,” the chrome-domed Gru (Steve Carell), who used to traffic in supervillainy, is now embracing his role as dad to three orphaned girls (“gar-urls,” filtered through his delightfully hammy Russian accent) far more complex than anything his arch-nemeses could have dreamed up.
We open on a birthday party for the littlest, Agnes (Elsie Kate Fisher), huge-eyed lover of everything pink and fluffy — so naturally Gru must stuff his potato-on-toothpicks body into a fairy princess costume to make her face light up.
As in the original “Despicable,” masterful physical comedy is what raises this animated pic so far above most of its competitors. Sure, it’s not as novel as the first time we were here, but directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud stay true to the clever, slapstick vibe.
Gru’s three daughters, Margo (from left), Agnes and Edith, return in this spot-on sequel.
The minions, naturally, are a large part of the magic. Little, yellow and pill-shaped, Gru’s babbling helpers look like escapees from a pharmaceutical commercial — and their antics are scientifically engineered for maximum kid hilarity (two words: fart gun).
Of course, just when Gru thinks he’s out, he’s pulled back in, this time by the “Anti-Villain League” and an overenthusiastic junior agent, Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig).
Wiig’s great at voicing animation; her verbal tics and modulations work perfectly for this gawky, thrill-chasing character. The initial sequence in which she chases Gru down, with the help of “lipstick taser” and car-turned-submarine, is one of the film’s best.
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After she drags an unwitting Gru to the AVL’s undersea lair, Steve Coogan’s stern agency head explains there’s a new crime boss in town with a dastardly master plan. The reformed Gru can help the good guys by exploiting his bad guy know-how.
He and the comely Agent Wilde case a local shopping mall in search of the new villain, where candidates include Ken Jeong’s wig purveyor and Benjamin Bratt’s Mexican restaurant owner, who’s a ringer for a long-missing baddie named El Macho. (Never has 3-D animation been so questionably used as to detail this character’s vast expanse of chest hair.)
He’s also got a bad-boy son the same age as Gru’s eledest, Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), giving rise to the delicious scenario of a former supervillain reacting to his little girl’s first boyfriend.
The film makes well-timed callbacks to some of the funniest gags in the first one, like wizened Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand) and his molasses-slow scooter “getaway,” and Agnes’ attachment to her “so fluffy!” stuffed unicorn. Her glass-shattering shriek when an interloper attempts to take it from her is the most potent weapon of all.
There are new characters to love, like a vicious watch-chicken who guards the Mexican joint (and knows his way around a detonator), and a demented purple version of the minions that harkens back to The Muppets’ Animal.
Like all really quality kid entertainment, it’s full of shout-outs to grown-up stuff, as in the Indiana Jones-reminiscent walk Gru must take through a booby-trapped corridor to get to a treasure — only this hero must correctly dance out the tune to “La Cucaracha” on the tiles.
And Nasim Pedrad of “SNL” makes an appearance as Gru’s meddling neighbor insistent on setting him up with her irritating friends; his flat “Oh, I did not see you standing there” after blasting her full in the face with a garden hose will be especially enjoyable for anyone who’s been similarly needled.
But it really all does come back to the minions, who raise the hilarity quotient every time they’re on-screen. Just when you think the directors are going to overdo it with these yellow weirdos, they don’t — but the end credits do feature scenes from “Minion Movie Auditions.” A spinoff is apparently set for 2014, and I’m betting where this is where the series loses its edge.
Perhaps not, though. So far the directors have demonstrated an admirable resistance to cutesiness. Two words: fart gun.