Minions Review

One In A Minion

What are the Minions exactly? Are they corn pops? The spawn of Twinkies gone awry? How do they breed? There are no female Minions (to the best of my knowledge), so are they asexual? Do they lay eggs? And what's the lifespan for these things? One Minion depicted with placing starfishes over his nipples in prehistoric times is shown to be alive in 1968, so are these guys immortal or something? For some reason, the movie is not interested in answering those questions and instead concentrates all of its efforts on making purely a product, one that's inoffensive enough to make sure no parents feathers get ruffled and one that can supply ample opportunities for numerous marketing partners.


Now, creating films that are perfect for family viewing and are able to be merchandised isn't inherently bad, it's just that Minions doesn't have anything going on on a storytelling level. The plot concerns three Minions, Kevin, Stuart and Bob traveling to various locations like New York City and London in the year 1968 in order to find an evil master to serve. The storyline does improve on the previous film in this Despicable Me saga by being more focused, though plot points seem to be more dictated by a desire to create jokes instead of letting gags be a natural extension of the plot itself.

It doesn't help that the trio of Minions we're stuck with for the majority of the movie are pretty poorly written characters. Bob is the typical naive youngster that kids can relate to and is pretty much there to be adorable. Stuart is set up in a scene in New York City as desiring fame as a singer, but that character trait is bizzarely dropped for the majority of the movie. As for Kevin, his personality fluctuates depending on what the films compulsion to create humor desires.

As you might imagine, being surrounded by this pack of Minions for an hour and a half becomes a taxing endeavor, though to the movies credit, it never approaches the excruciating level of quality seen by family fare like the Alvin And The Chipmunk movies. That's mainly because, with so many gags executed in the course of Minions, the law of averages says a couple of them have to land. There's a couple of funny joeks deriving from the 60's setting (a billboard proclaiming Nixon to be a candidate you can trust is obvious, but undeniably humorous) and some winning jokes derive from Jon Hamms turn as Herb, whose lanky character design alone inspires giggles.

That Herb fellow is married to Scarlet Overkill (Sandra Bullock), who gets less screentime than I expected considering Bullocks caliber as an actress. Time that could be spent with her character does not, alas, go to answering my numerous queries about the Minions as a species. Rather, the movie spends considerable amount of time delivering more jokes revolving around the three protagonists running into objects like a sumo wrestler or a giant snowball. Truth be told, Minions isn't bad per se (I'd actually consider it a notable improvement over Despicable Me 2) but it is a middling and forgettable movie that puts commerce fully over creating even just memorable jokes. Considering animated family movies that have been released in the last 18 months include The LEGO Movie, Big Hero 6 and Inside Out, it's pretty apparent that the creators of Minions can and should do far better than this.