'Despicable' filmmakers like their villains to be redeemable

Anyone who has ever told a story to a group of children knows it's the good, well-behaved ones who always sit up front and listen attentively, beatific smiles on their faces.

But at least one new animation company is telling tales for the spitball-throwing troublemakers in the back row.

Despicable Me, a comedy with a super-villain as the leading man, opens Friday and is the first film from Illumination Entertainment, a Universal Picturescompany founded by former Fox animation chief Chris Meledandri (Ice Age, Robots).

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They're currently in production on the live-action/animation hybrid Hop, an Easter Bunny comedy in which the hippity-hoppity hero (voiced by Russell Brand) disses his holiday duties to seek stardom in L.A., and a 3-D retelling of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, an environmental allegory in which the title character's unwavering righteousness is nonetheless trounced by the reckless greed of the truffula-tree-chopping Once-ler .

"We started to look at the idea of 'What if your protagonist was a guy who liked to do bad things, but you have great empathy for him because you understood his vulnerabilities?' " Meledandri says.

Gru, the pointy-nosed, curious-accented bad guy of Despicable Me (voiced by Steve Carell), skips ahead at the coffee shop by using a freeze-ray on the other customers, drives a tank through rush-hour traffic and wants to shrink — and then steal — the moon.

Not that all these characters are such bad guys. The filmmakers say they gravitate toward these troubled personalities because they give a character more dimension.

That led to Despicable Me's twist — the three little orphan girls who end up in the care of Gru and his countless yellow, pill-shaped minions. A villain shaped by a cruel mother (voiced by Julie Andrews), Gru finds himself with a chance to be different. Different from the man at the beginning of the film who gets pleasure in popping a child's balloon.

Fatherhood is also at the heart of Hop, planned for release on April 1. Brand's animated rabbit is the son of the Easter Bunny. He isn't interested in taking over the family business and escapes to crash with a fellow slacker, albeit of the human persuasion (James Marsden).

"It's an unlikely friendship that develops between these two guys, both of whom are having trouble growing up and accepting adulthood," Meledandri says. "Each becomes the catalyst for the other to do so."

Brand also has a role in Despicable Me, providing a voice for Gru's sidekick, Dr. Nefario.

Hop, The Lorax, and Despicable Me all share Illumination's screenwriting duo Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, who started working with Meledandri on another Dr. Seuss project, 2008's Horton Hears a Who.

"We didn't want to make movies just for kids or movies that talk down to kids," Paul says. "There's an emphasis on finding the non-traditional lead characters at Illumination."

"Yeah, kids grow up thinking the Easter Bunny is this perfect, magical creature," Daurio says. "And we've kind of turned that on its, uh, ear."

In The Lorax, the fuzzy-faced being who appears to speak for the endangered trees gets the title, but even he'll need some rounding to be more than a righteous preacher, says its director, Chris Renaud, who also madeDespicable Me: "If we do our jobs, we'll create a character you want to spend time with, so we have to find a layer beyond scolding."

Some Seuss yarns can be deeply intimate, but The Lorax has what its writers describe as an epic scale: A fantastic forest, full of weird and wonderful creatures, gets decimated by the short-sighted, greedy Once-ler — represented in the storybook by only a green arm extending from the window of his shack.

As they expand the story, aiming for a debut on March 2, 2012, the Once-ler will likely reveal his full visage, Renaud says.

Though the devil will get his due, there's a deeper message the filmmakers try to convey with each movie. With the toll of environmental carelessness never more present than in the oil-smeared surf of the Gulf of Mexico, the director says he's especially motivated while working on The Lorax.

"It reinvigorates our feelings about wanting to tell the story," Renaud says. "If the film can expand on that — not just for kids in the States, but around the world — that could be a great thing."