DESPICABLE ME

Here is the good news first: this is a four-star film with a story Christians should love. A hardened, selfish villain gets adopted by three little orphan girls — who prayed, sincerely, to be adopted — and their innocent love does what nothing else could. It's a story of redemption dressed up as a cartoon caper, and it earns its ending.

The cost is small but real. There's a lot of cartoon slapstick — squid guns, wedgies, falls, dog bites — plus mild scatological humor (nose-picking, a mud pie, a spraying toilet pipe). None of it is scary, but research suggests kids copy violence more readily when it looks like fun rather than frightening, so it's worth watching alongside younger children rather than just handing them the remote.

For older kids and up, this one is an easy yes. Watch it together, and let the ending do what it's built to do.

Gru wants to be the greatest villain alive — and he's furious that someone just stole the Great Pyramid of Giza before he could pull off anything that impressive. To fund his own scheme (stealing the moon itself), he needs the backing of the Evil Bank, and to beat his rival, he needs three little cookie-selling orphan girls as cover for a heist. He adopts them purely as a means to an end. He has no idea what he's just brought into his house.

Four stars means this is about as good as this kind of film gets, and the source backs that up. The movie is clever enough to genuinely surprise — a rare thing — opening with three girls praying sincerely to be adopted, prayers the story actually answers. It's built more as an action-adventure than a joke machine, with real laugh-out-loud moments scattered through it, and a third act that turns into a race to the finish that lands in ways you won't see coming. The ending is described as so uplifting and redemptive that it outweighs the movie's weaker moments — the slapstick, the scatological gags — making this a rare family cartoon that earns its full marks.

This is, at heart, a redemption story, and the film treats that redemption as real. The three little girls pray to be adopted, and their prayer is answered. Their innocent love, goodness, and kindness are the force that transforms Gru — a man the story is honest enough to call "extremely sinful." That's a striking thing for a mainstream cartoon to say plainly: that every heart carries selfishness and despicable qualities, and that love — not cleverness, not villainy, not winning — is what actually changes a person.

The film keeps its moral compass elsewhere too. Stealing is rebuked. Lying is rebuked. And there's a pointed jab at the bank behind the 2008 financial meltdown, cast here as the "Evil Bank" that used to be Lehman Bros. — a bit of moral commentary aimed at real-world greed.

One note for discerning viewers: a Jewish mother figure appears in a negative, if comical, light — worth knowing before you watch.

The longing underneath this whole story — a hard heart made soft by love it didn't ask for — is the gospel's oldest theme. "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19), and the God who answers a child's sincere prayer is not a stranger to this movie's world.

This is a witty, surprising, genuinely redemptive cartoon with a handful of slapstick and bathroom gags that are easy to talk through as a family. The ending earns every bit of its four stars. Our answer: worth the trip — older children and up.