Despicable You

Lately, Steve Carell has been on my list of top favorite people ever, mostly because of his wonderful ability to make me feel extremely sorry for him, and even love him, even when he is acting like the most obnoxious person in the entire world.  I have been loading up on all the Steve Carell I can dream of.  Last week I watch Despicable Me for the first time where Carell plays a super-villain intent on stealing the moon.  After all his loud rants and annoying schemes, all of which are incredibly funny, he develops a heart.  He learns to love three of the cutest animated orphans I have ever seen in my life.  Steve Carell can nearly bring me to tears when they are taken away from him and he misses their dance recital.  What a tragic situation!  The encore performance was way better though.  Agnes also blew my mind with her hilarious cuteness and attraction to unicorns.  And his little creepy green alienish friends will make me laugh every time I see them, even if Carell's character Gru did treat them unfavorably at times.  It's probably against some labor code to send your employees to outer space with no equipment.  But no matter what, Steve Carell blows me away even when I can't see his incredible acting skills, just hear the hilarious words coming out of his mouth.

Just today I watched another Steve Carell masterpiece, Dinner for Schmucks.  Yet another obnoxious character, Barry doesn't really seem to understand his place in the world.  In fact, he doesn't really seem to understand much about the world at all.  He is a mouse taxidermist who makes artistic scenes out of dead mice.  They are really quite cute, but borderline on depressing when they begin to clearly represent his own failed marriage.  Throughout the movie, Barry accidentally sabotages Tim's relationship with his girlfriend Julie and his career.  It's a little sad though, because everything he does is with the best intentions.  Barry is invited to a dinner for losers where at the end of the meal the biggest loser is crowned champion.  Even after he learns the true purpose of the dinner, he still wants to win because at least he would be winning something.  My favorite part of the movie was watching Barry grow, not only as his friendship with Tim strengthened, but as he became more hopeful.  At the beginning of the movie he quotes John Lennon's Imagine "You may say that I'm a dreamer but I'm not", but at the end he finishes it off with "You may say that I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one".  He also brings out a underlying goodness that the other characters in the movie lacked.  He would jump in front of a car to save a mouse, even if it is already dead.  Barry's goodness and ability to be honest and loving easily made me love him.

Date Night, a movie from early 2010, featured Carell in a slightly different light.  This time he was the always hilarious husband who had fallen into a routine with his wife and only really wanted to change things up.  Somehow they get roped into a night filled with adventure after they steal a dinner reservation, as they travel New York City looking for a flash drive that the fictitious Tripplehorns apparently have something to do with.  After a long night filled with danger and scandal, the suburban couple outsmarts the criminal masterminds and gets to walk free.  Carell uses his wit and commitment to having a night to remember to keep the movie enchanting throughout.  Still slightly obnoxious, Carell is hilarious as always.

But Carell's biggest success, in my opinion, comes not through the multitude of movies he has starred in, but the American rendition of the originally British show, The Office.  Carell, back to his typical annoying role, plays Michael Scott, regional manager of the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin, a paper company.  Michael struggles with issues a paper company would face in the age of computers, but also with a few more interesting problems.  He goes through his fair share of relationship issues and fights with co-workers who don't really understand him.  Seven seasons in, the show will soon be coming to an end, bringing with it a multitude of comedians other than Carell who have established careers in comedy.  Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight Shrute, has landed roles in movies such as Juno and Monsters vs. Aliens since The Office piloted in 2005.  John Krasinski, otherwise known as Jim Haplert has been in Shrek the Third and It's Complicated.  Although none of these quite match Steve Carell's fourteen hit movies and two appearances on Saturday Night Live since the pilot of The Office, it's no doubt that Carell helped to launch others careers through the success he brought to the hit comedy.  And although The Office is coming to an end relatively soon, something I'll surely be sad to see, it's certain that we won't be seeing the end of the comedic success Steve Carell is known to produce anytime soon.

I'm optimistic that the end of The Office will by no means be the end of Steve Carell.  He has the comedic genius to star in movies for as long as he wants to.  And if you don't agree that Steve Carell is hilarious, Despicable You.