Poor Minions. One minute they’re bebopping along, happily stealing scenes from the likes of Kristen Wiig and moving merchandise by the little yellow buttload. The next, they’re thrust into the harsh, unforgiving spotlight, burdened beyond their means by that most mercenary of capitalist machines: the kiddie-movie franchise.
Welcome to Hollywood, fellas. It doesn’t get any easier.
From a bookkeeping standpoint, Gru’s bumbling sidekicks are clearly up to the task of carrying a movie all by themselves. As I write this, Minions, the third feature in the justifiably popular Despicable Me franchise, has crossed the $400 million mark in worldwide box-office receipts—a figure that all but guarantees that Minions 2 won’t be far behind.
That wouldn’t be a bad thing if their first headlining show didn’t stretch the property so thin. For about 10 minutes, Minions is wonderful. For reasons that will eventually become obvious, screenwriter Brian Lynch retcons the heck out of the little guys, dialing their origins back to the primordial ooze from which all earthly life presumably crawled. We first meet them as little single-celled organisms bouncing from one bad amoeba to the next, constantly on the search for the baddest amoeba of them all—they’re minions by nature, and all they really want is a villain to serve.
A funny and charming opening sequence, narrated by Geoffrey Rush, follows them through several millenniums of henchmen history as they latch on to dinosaurs, cavemen, vampires, abominable snowmen, and even Napoleon, offering their well-meaning services as scheming second bananas. They bungle every gig, of course, and eventually find themselves in frosty exile, whiling away the decades in an arctic cave until a new master presents himself.
Or herself, as it turns out. After years of self-imposed banishment, an enterprising Minion named Kevin recruits the guitar-obsessed Stuart and the teddy bear-toting Bob to embark on a search for a new master. Their journey leads them to New York City circa 1968 and then on to pre-Disney Orlando, where they hope to find a new heavy at an annual convention called Villain-Con. That’s where they meet Scarlett Overkill (voice of Sandra Bullock), a super-villainess who enlists the Minions’ services to steal Queen Elizabeth’s crown. Armed with some zany weaponry courtesy of Scarlett’s devoted but dim-witted husband, Herb (Jon Hamm), the little yellow trio proceed to lay accidental siege to Swinging London amid a nonstop barrage of frantic chases and obligatory pop-culture references.
If only Minions could maintain its early level of breezy appeal. Unfortunately (if predictably), the movie grinds to a halt once it gets down to the business of turning its title characters into heroes. The hope seems to be that Scarlett will act as a stand-in for Steve Carell’s franchise antihero Gru, giving the Minions a human foil for their antics, but the character has none of the layers that make Gru so weirdly likable. Bullock does a fine job, but Scarlett is a one-note joke with no real punch line. She has two settings—sweet and shrill—and nothing interesting in between.
There are requisite appearances by terrific voice actors, including fun turns by Michael Keaton and Allison Janney as gun-toting bank robbers, and any review of Minions would be remiss if it failed to mention Brit TV comedy queen Jennifer Saunders, who plays a youngish Queen Elizabeth, as the movie’s standout performer. But the onus to carry the film falls on Kevin, Stuart, and Bob (all three of whom are voiced by co-director Pierre Coffin). As sidekicks, they’re fantastic. As the main attractions, the Minions are one-trick ponies. There are a few inspired gags—the depiction of Orlando, three years before the coming of Disney World, is a hoot—and the animators have some fun with the period setting. By the time Minions hits its halfway mark, though, it has long overstayed its welcome. It doesn’t exactly grate, but neither does it captivate.
Look, I’m on the Minions’ side—really, I am. I love those funny little googly-eyed bananas of servile ineptitude. Remember that Despicable Me 2 teaser where they sang a Minionized version of “Barbara Ann”? I’m not proud of this, but I’m part of the reason it’s racked up more than 32 million views on YouTube so far. I’ll continue to enjoy their antics—just in much smaller doses.
April Snellings is a staff writer and project editor for Rue Morgue Magazine, which reaches more than 500,000 horror, thriller, and suspense fans across its media platforms. She recently joined the lineup of creators for Glass Eye Pix's acclaimed audio drama series Tales from Beyond the Pale, an Entertainment Weekly “Must List” pick that has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
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