EVEN THE second tier of animated filmmaking is fairly advanced, and Despicable Me's brisk and intelligent rephrase of the evil genius plot makes up for several cul de sacs. The "everybody dance" ending is acceptable in something this essentially lightweight, but it's never going to be original in anybody's movie.

The bald, heavy eyebrowed and Akim Tamiroff–accented Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) is a mad scientist working on his latest plot. He seeks to surpass his recent theft of the Times Square Jumbotron: a nice feat, but it's one that's been eclipsed by a new villain on the block called Vector, who has just swiped one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The new competition is making it hard for Gru to get a loan from the Bank of Evil, a place sketched out with Chuck Jones' skill: vast marble halls, agonized caryatids squashed under the weight of their pillars.

The management suggests that if Gru were to steal the new shrink-ray just being developed, they might be able to use it as collateral to finance his magnum opus: the theft of the Moon itself. But Vector, an unsightly nerd bearing a notable resemblance to Bill Gates, swipes the ray from Gru. The scheme to retrieve it depends on a trio of forlorn, cookie-selling orphans who have been haunting his front door.

Directors Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin handle the cuteness deftly ("I think you're nice but scary—like Santa," says the most charming of the three girls). The film's trailers work every scene of the children, or cut to the comic relief, a mob of minions: essentially humanoid Hostess Twinkies with speedy voices who are basically filler. Despite the kid-fodder, Despicable Me doesn't stint the hard work of being a supervillain; the action may be silly, but the directors take it seriously. The 3-D is mostly a gimmick, though there's one startling moment of a rocket's needle nose heading for the audience; this gag worked just as well flat in Mike Hodges' Flash Gordon.

Dispicable Me

PG; 95 min.

Opens July 9