Film review: Despicable Me 2

A little early in "Despicable Me 2," the head of a spy agency asks Gru to find a villain by going undercover in a mall.

Undercover in a mall?! I audibly slapped my forehead. Is this the best plot they could think of? In the first movie he stole the moon! Man, talk about diminished ambitions.

The film really suffers from comparisons to its predecessor, an endlessly inventive adventure with great oddball characters set in the world of James-Bond-global-takeover villainy. It started in Egypt and ended in outer space.

Most of this movie takes place in a mall!

I don't want to give it a bad review. The minions are always good for a laugh, most of the sequences were funny. But whereas every sequence in the first film was a home run, every sequence here is pretty much a single.

And his partner/love interest Lucy kind of confused me. She looks exactly like Helen Mirren, yet, Helen Mirren isn't doing her voice. Instead it's Kristen Wiig whom I'm still sore with after the run-every-joke-into-the-ground "Bridesmaids."

And the oldest daughter has a subplot about a crush on a cute boy and Gru's attempts to keep them apart. This is borrowed from the lesser "Hotel Transylvania" and doesn't even have a real resolution.

Go see it, but bring a kid.

Film review: Wreck-it Ralph

A running gag in "Toy Story 3" has the Ken doll insisting he's not a girl's toy. This existential crisis
becomes the basis of "Wreck-it Ralph."

Ralph is a bad guy in his video game, but wants more out of his life. He goes on an adventure driven by the belief that if he earns a medal, he'll be accepted by his peers.

It borrows a lot from the "Toy Story" films (children's playthings have their own lives when the children leave the room), and everytime the characters are in their Grand Central Station, it makes you think of "Monsters Inc." Though not as good as the "Toy Story" trilogy and about as good as "Monsters Inc." if you can put the comparisons aside, it stands alone as a nifty, often clever, dazzling-to-look at film.

It's top heavy with explanation, it seems the first hour is characters explaining the internal logic of the plot, the pace picks up by the third act when we finally get some action, and interaction between Ralph and Venellope, another outcast character who seems to be dealing with her lot in life better than Ralph.

It's no "Toy Story," but a film that comes close is still worth seeing.

Review: "How to Murder Your Wife"

I just caught this Jack Lemmon comedy on TCM (again). If I turn on the TV and it's on, I have to sit through the whole thing.

First of all, it's a relic! An anachronism! A Mad Men, first couple seasons of Bewitched look at how men regarded woman in the early 60s. Single women were for sex and ogling, and wives were smothering/mothering annoying obstacles to freedom! And, it was a man's world, what MST3K would describe as "when doughy white men walked the earth." Lots of martinis and palling with the boys, and suits and ties.

The creators had no idea they were making a timepiece

If you ignore some of the unsavory implications (at one point, Lemmon slips his wife a "goofball."), it's actually very funny. And the last scene between Lemmon and his wife (Virna Lisi, filmed to look even more beautiful than she really is) is actually very sweet.