Repeating a formula that made the last installment the most profitable* film in Universal history, “Despicable Me 3” offers up more of the same: more Gru — actually Gru times two if you count his twin brother, Dru; more Minions; more Looney Tunes-esque sight gags; more pop-culture references, with an emphasis on the 1980s this time; and more catchy* Pharrell Williams songs on the soundtrack.

Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig return to voice a pair of superspy parents out to rid the world of* evil yet again.

When we last left Gru (Carell) and Lucy (Wiig), they had forged a happy home with the three girls (Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Nev Scharrel) the big bad softee wound up with* in the first movie. When this one starts, their livelihood is quickly threatened when their Anti-Villain League’s new boss (Jenny Slate) fires the couple after they fail to catch an arch villain named Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker) — a former ’80s child TV star who has turned to a life of crime.

Soon the film introduces Dru (Carell again), a long-lost twin brother who seems to be everything Gru isn’t, all the way down to a swath of blond hair. But things are not necessarily what they seem, and the brotherly love turns into something else as we learn more about Gru’s family history, including a brief cameo* from his mother (Julie Andrews).

There are plenty of jokes here, such as a French character that’s a spitting image* of Gerard Depardieu, a rather weird depiction of a fictional European island and two laugh-out-loud Minion sketches: one that may be a direct reference to the song-and-dance number in Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times,” and a prison sequence scored to Pharrell’s hit “Freedom.”

Things of course wind up leading to a big-bang final battle. One could perhaps see such an ending as a form of industry self-mockery in the way that, say, the Lego movies like to poke fun at their own existence. The franchise has its recipe perfectly down pat* by now, and with further installments likely on the horizon, it only asks that we laugh with it all the way to the bank.(SD-Agencies)