Movie Review: Despicable Me 2

My daughter's elementary school last night hosted a movie night in its gym—they showed Despicable Me 2 on the gym wall, and kids splayed sleeping bags out in the floor. They served pizza slices, popcorn and soft drinks for 50 cents or a buck or two each. The kids were just ecstatic to be together on a Friday night, at school and without the responsibility to accomplish anything. There were a few times that a couple of the kids got a little rough or a little loud, but, for the most part, everybody and everything was fine.  

My wife and I sat on a blanket at the back of the gym, using the assistive-light widgets on our smartphones to read stuff we had each brought. For example, I learned last night that, right before the 1969 season, Vince Lombardi and the Redskins picked up Frank Ryan, the Browns’ quarterback in their 1964 championship, off waivers to back up Sonny Jurgensen. 

Anyway, it’s so interesting and even kind of wonderful to be more and more abstracted onto the periphery of someone else’s drama. My 6-year-old had all sorts of things going on during this event last night with some other girls, and at one point I could see that a couple of boys came by and interacted with them briefly. On the way out, a couple of my daughter's friends came by and they gave each other long, meaningful hugs, like they had just been through this giant, fantastic experience together. It was an hour and a half, slices of takeout pizza on paper plates and a DVD, but there was all sorts of huge things going on for my daughter and the other children. Getting to go to that thing last night was much more emotionally intense for my daughter than probably a half-dozen experiences that my wife and I have already paid more than $500 each to create for her (trips to amusement parks or whatever).

The movie looked OK. A couple of times, it got loud enough to look up and see some funny stuff going on. And a couple of times, it got quiet enough to look up and see that the animation really is just amazing. 

Spoiler alert ...