despicable assumption

Of the myriad of movies that our kids like, Despicable Me 2 is near the top of almost everyone in our family's list of enjoyable films.  Seriously, it's worth watching, whether you have kids or not.  If you haven't seen it, stick it in your Netflix queue, or plan on renting it, or whatever you do to see older movies.  It is that good.

Having acknowledged how entertaining and brilliant the movie is there is one glaring issue I have with it, and I have embedded a clip that illustrates the problem below.



I apologize that this is going to be fairly dark considering the source material, but it is what bugs me every time this scene comes up.  I genuinely cannot enjoy this scene, and this might ruin it for you too.  If you don't want this scene ruined skip the rest of this article.  I'm serious on that.

I want you to imagine for a moment you are that horrible woman on the date with Gru.  You're sitting at a table dining with your date when you decide to humiliate him in a heartless fashion.  You reach for his toupee then everything goes black.  You regain consciousness the next morning in your own bed, you are sore and bruised, and you have no recollection of anything that happened after the beginning of your meal.  What would you assume had happened the night before?

If I were that woman I would assume that Gru had slipped a roofie into my drink.  Even though the woman was not mistreated in the way she would probably assume, there very few scenarios where what this turn of events will not scar her.  It's played for laughs because we assume the woman deserves to feel a little bruised the next day, and the physical damage can be written off with cartoon physics and all, but the emotional damage that she will experience in this situation would likely far outweigh any physical pain she'd experience. This is a serious issue even before considering the real possibility that Gru would loose his girls and wind up in prison based on strong circumstantial evidence that he is a loner with psychological issues who must have badly mistreated his far-more-attractive date on that night.

If you read through that, I am sorry to spoil that part of the movie for you.  The rest of this film is entertaining, though this scene is unfortunately key in establishing why Gru should care about Lucy, so it can't be easily skipped.  It's just one of those scenes that I'll just always have to grit my teeth through.  Now, maybe it will be for you as well.