ShoWest 2010: Full Trailer for Despicable Me Screened

The annual Opening Ceremony for the 2010 ShoWest Convention kicked-off with the traditional montage salute to the $100 million grossing films of 2009, there being 31 with seven of them in 3D, presented by Adam Fogelson, the new Chairman of Universal Pictures.

After the montage, he shined a spotlight on Universal’s first three summer movies with a trailer for Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, an extended red band trailer for Nick Stoller’s Get Him to the Greek and the premiere of the new full-length trailer for Universal’s 3D animated family comedy Despicable Me.

The latter features the voice of Steve Carell as Gru, a diabolical super-villain who finds himself having to care for three orphaned girls. Even though there have been a number of teasers, this is the first trailer that gives us a good idea what to expect from the story, the look and the animation and the tone of the movie.

The trailer opens with the character of Gru, who looks a bit like Uncle Fester from The Addams Family, walking into a coffee shop, seeing the long line and letting out a sigh before pulling out a freeze gun which he uses on the people waiting before stepping up to get his coffee and pastry.

The voiceover says that “For Gru, being a supervillain isn’t easy” and we see a scene of him at a rock concert type setting addressing his army of minions, literally millions of the squat creatures that we’ve seen in a previous trailer. He tells the excited crowd that they stole the Statue of Liberty and the crowd goes wild until he adds, “The small one from Las Vegas” and they all react disappointed. It mentions that he has to control an army of millions and that he has to outsmart a ruthless arch-enemy who we see briefly.

Then it says that he’s about to inherit three small troublemakers, introducing the little girls who show up at his doorstep, and he tells them that they will not cry or sneeze or fart and make no annoying sounds, and the little one responds, “Does this count as annoying?” and starts making popping sounds with her mouth.

It then shows him telling his minions about their masterplan to steal the moon and starts showing drawings of how they’re going to do it by shrinking the moon, but the kids have replaced one of them with a drawing of Gru on the toilet, and they start laughing at that.

The trailer then shows a lot of shots of the jets and giant drills and other things that Gru uses while doing supervillain-type things, as well as a shot of a shark jumping out of the water at Gru and he bops it in the jaw. The voice over says, “Just because he’s a bad guy, doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy.” He’s then sitting on a couch reading a story to the little girls, “And then the kittens started to yawn.” The littlest girl (who is almost as adorable as Russell from Up) tells him to make the kittens drink the milk–it’s a pop-up book–to which Gru says, “Wow, this is garbage, you actually like this?”

It then shows Gru on a rollercoaster with the girls as they have gone to a carnival together, and the last scene has Gru at a carnival shooting game trying to win a prize for the little girl. He shoots repeatedly and misses using the gun provided, and the attendant makes a snarky comment about how disappointed the girl is about him not winning, so he goes, “Okay, my turn,” then he pulls out a giant ray gun and blasts the entire stand, as they walk away with the price.

The trailer ends with one of the minions trying hard to say the title of the movie but not being able to get it out so another one comes onto the screen and helps him.

It looks kind of cute, somewhere between The Incredibles and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs in terms of the look of the animation and the amount of action and FX involved.

Despicable Me opens on July 9. It’s probably safe to assume this trailer will premiere in front of DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon when it opens on March 26.

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