Movie Review: Minions
Rating: 1 and 1/2 Stars
The Minions get what I saw as an underwhelming origin story in the Despicable Me characters.
I’ll start with the positives. The movie had a bit of comedic ingenuity using goofy characters that speak a multitude of Spanish, French, and maybe a little bit of Hebrew and Latin and who knows that else. Point being, it’s not always easy to execute comedy when you can’t speak, but the Minions have an endearing quality about them, that’s why they got this movie.
There’s a good bit of falling back onto the slapstick which makes sense since the Minion’s are fairly indestructible. I couldn’t say the movie drives home any memorable or quality laughs though, and that’s why I can’t go any higher than one and a half stars on this review.
The plot and story are fairly weak for what this movie could’ve been. The idea of how this group is motivated behind the common goal of serving an evil master is an interesting one but it never really gets explained. Rather from the opening it is just told to us. This is the way they are. Maybe if the Minion’s could speak our language we would know, but alas, serving evil is what they do.
Off on a search for their next boss, Minion’s Kevin, Bob, and Stuart head to VillainCon to hook up with Sandra Bullock’s heavily evil and overzealous Scarlet Overkill. She is as the billing suggests. She gives us a taste of a sad backstory but the movie never gives her any time to develop it in the interest of keeping her inherently evil.
Obviously the relationship between the three ragtag Minion’s and their new boss goes awry and Kevin, Bob, and Stuart must race around Great Britain for their lives.
As the movie came to its climax, there was an opportunity for the movie to really lay on some Minion ingenuity but rather attempts a few laughs with a Godzilla Minion that lost most of the built excitement to that point.
The biggest solace in this film is that it’s not a snoozer because the Minions are able to keep the pace up. It’s only 90 minutes and maybe worth a rental for kids who loved the Minion’s in Despicable Me. Most kids will enjoy the film. For parents, tolerable, but you know you’ve seen better.
The ending of the film sets up for an obvious sequel opportunity which piqued my interest. This story has potential to be far more interesting then what we got in this film.
