Despicable Me 2 (PG)
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Caution: potential spoilers.

This is the first sequel to Despicable Me. It came out in 2013, but I didn't see it until 2019. So... there's a secret research facility in the Arctic Circle, which gets stolen by an airship with a giant magnet. Meanwhile, Gru is hosting a birthday party for Agnes. One of the guests at the party is Gru's neighbor Jillian (Nasim Pedrad), who keeps trying to get him to date various friends of hers, though Gru isn't interested in dating anyone. (At one point we see a flashback to when he was a young boy, and an incident that explains his fear of dating.) Anyway... Gru is later abducted by Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig), an agent of the Anti-Villain League, who brings him to AVL headquarters. (They're accompanied by a couple of Gru's minions, who had tried to stop the abduction, but ended up being captured by Lucy, themselves.) At headquarters, they meet the director of the AVL, Silas Ramsbottom. He wants to recruit Gru to ferret out whoever stole the research lab, which had been developing a mutagen that can transform harmless creatures into monsters. But Gru has no interest in getting involved in anything like that. Now that he's an adoptive father of three young girls, he just wants to live a relatively normal life. (He's got Dr. Nefario and the minions making jams and jellies to sell, since he's given up villainy.)

When Gru returns home, Dr. Nefario tells him that he misses being a villain, and has gotten a job offer elsewhere. After Nefario leaves, Gru decides to do the job for the AVL, after all. He's teamed up with Lucy, to go undercover at a mall food court, where they run a cupcake shop. The AVL had traced the mutagen to that general area, but they weren't sure which of the business owners in the mall was responsible for the theft. Soon after the cupcake shop opens, the owner of "Salsa & Salsa" (a Mexican restaurant/dance club) stops in to welcome them, and to order cupcakes for an upcoming Cinco de Mayo party he's hosting. He says his name is Eduardo Pérez, but Gru is certain he's actually "El Macho," a notorious supervillain who had supposedly died years ago, in the most macho way possible. And he believes El Macho must be the one behind the theft, but he and Lucy can find no proof of that. Meanwhile, Agnes hopes that Gru and Lucy will fall in love, because she wants a mother. And Margo gets a crush on Eduardo's son, Antonio. Also, throughout the early part of the movie, Gru's minions keep getting mysteriously abducted. And um, at one point, Gru agrees to go on a date with one of Jillian's friends, Shannon (Kristen Schaal), for a reason I can't remember. She turns out to be unbearably obnoxious, and Lucy ends up rescuing Gru from his bad date. The two of them finally become closer, which makes Gru happy. But unfortunately, Ramsbottom later arrests Floyd Eagle-san (Ken Jeong), the owner of a wig shop at the mall. With the case closed, Lucy gets reassigned, and it seems that she and Gru may never see each other again.

Whew. I'm fairly sure I probably got a lot of details out of order there, but it probably doesn't matter. And I guess I don't want to reveal any more details beyond this point. I'll just say there's a lot more action, drama, and humor to come. And of course there's a happy ending. Aside from that... well, I just really liked Lucy. And of course there's some good music in the movie, once again provided mainly by Pharrell Williams (most notably the song "Happy," which became a big hit). Anyway, I think I enjoyed this movie a bit more than the first one, but it's hard to be sure. All I know is I look forward to watching more of the franchise.