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| Directed by Kyle Balda and Pierre Coffin Written by Brian Lynch |
Why? Why did this happen? Why did the Minions become so massively, incredibly, near omni-presently popular? Why are these little yellow pills on practically every cable channel, every movie theater, every billboard, and every toy aisle in the country? Is there some hidden brilliance I'm just not seeing?
It's not like I hate animation, not at all, the cartoonists and toymakers of this industry are doing far more than the "serious" film makers to push the envelope of purely visual storytelling. Hell, as a child Pixar was part of what got me interested in the medium in the first place. And I didn't hate Despicable Me either, it's a perfectly good little kids movie, but of all the aspects of it to franchise, advertise, and market the hell out of, why the Minions? The whole point of the Minions is that they have no real character, they're just interchangeable servants of whoever they happen to be serving.
But they're also cute and do slapstick and speak in occasionally amusing nonsense tongues, so they of course became huge with children, so huge that someone at Universal (Probably swimming in a lake of molten gold after having made an ungodly sum of money) signed off on a solo feature focusing on a one-joke supporting character of a move that wasn't that special to begin with. Minions is the end result of that.
The race of Minions has been around far longer than man, and ever since they first wriggled up on dry land, they've dedicated themselves to serving "the biggest villian" they can find, but their childlike enthusiasm and equally childish antics have always ended up either killing their master or getting them fired. After killing Napoleon, they go into hiding and over the next hundred years begin to grow apathetic about their lack of a job (If only this script were intelligent enough to further explore that idea), leading Minions Bob, Stuart, and Kevin to go on a brave quest to find a new master, leading them to 1968 Orlando, where they hear of VillianCon, where all the world's supervillains meet to network, mingle, share evil schemes, and hire new minions. (How this organization remains secret when they broadcast ads for it on television, publish their own magazine, and/or somehow lobbied to make it legal is never addressed)
There's where they meet and are hired by Sandra Bullock as Scarlet Overkill, the world's first high profile female supervillian, and head off to her castle in London (Are supervillians operating in secret, or are they celebrities, or are they like the Mafia or something, make up your mind!) and try to steal the Crown from Queen Elizabeth, and hijinks ensue. If that sounds like a boilerplate heist premise that has nothing to do with Despicable Me, then that's because that is all that Minions is. Normally with that kind of premise you at least have some nice dynamics among colorful characters played by skilled actors to keep the production afloat, but the stars of Minions have no distinguishable character. (To the point that they're all voiced by the same person, franchise creator Pierre Coffin) Originally, like I mentioned above, that was by design, they were practically a background joke, but when they're the main characters you have to do a lot more than give one of them a little stuffed bear and say they're the cute one.
I hoped that the supporting characters would at least pick up some of the slack, and they definitely try their hardest. Sandra Bullock is clearly having an absolute blast hamming it up as Scarlet Overkill, ex-Mad Men lead Jon Hamm is plenty of fun as her husband/assisstant Herb, Jennifer Saunders as the Queen steals every scene she's in, they're all trying. Unfortunately, they seldom get to have the screen for more than five minutes as all the film's attention is focused squarely on the Minions. I find that they're shtick tends to get old after fifteen minutes, let alone an hour and a half.
If nothing else, it at least looks really good, that's always been the saving grace of the Despicable Me franchise, which remains the only semi-decent production to ever come out of Illumination. Their aesthetic sensibilities feel ripped straight from midcentury newspaper cartoons, and that carries over into Minions, which puts a surprisingly large amount of effort into recreating 60s America and Britain, which leads to myriad pop-culture references that are sure to fly over the target audience's heads, and feel like they were put there by the animators to keep themselves from going mad while rendering this, and also a genuinely well curated era-appropriate soundtrack.
You might have noticed the parentheses with snarky comments and thought "Your'e just being cynical, can't you enjoy this for what it is?" Yes I realize that this is a kids movie, but making a kids movie isn't an excuse to not try. If anything, it's a call to try harder. Since your audience is made up of impressionable children, shouldn't you try to leave a good impression? Or at least something they'll think about on any level other than surface level amusement?
If you really need to keep your kids quiet for 90 minutes and you don't want to sit through Frozen for the fifty-gazzilionth time, please don't take them to this. Take them to see, oh I don't know, Inside Out. Or Max if it's still playing, or Jurassic World if you think they're old enough, but please stay away from Minions. It is not worth your time, it is not worth your children's time, and it certainly wasn't worth mine.
Have a nice day.
Greg.B
FINAL RATING: 2/5
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