Writing a review for Minions: The Rise of Gru feels like a somewhat pointless exercise. Maybe that's why I've waited four days since I saw the film to write this up. What else can be said about the Despicable Me saga at this point? It's highly popular, but not especially deep. Like most Illumination films, your mileage with these Minions or Despicable Me installments will vary based on how much you like just watching a succession of gags. That doesn't offer much to analyze or break down, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to look at here. In the case of The Rise of Gru, the jokes have a little more oomph to them compared to every other Despicable Me follow-up and it's nice to see the franchise getting in touch with its naughty side again.
The biggest issue the Despicable Me franchise has faced in trying to sustain the exploits of Gru (Steve Carell) across multiple films is that he peaked as a character in the first film, where he was nonchalant about the idea of a young girl getting impaled to death. Since then, he's been a more conventional suburban dad whose default behavior is foiling baddies, not being bad. Much like Shrek, Gru is a lot more fun breaking the rules than adhering to them.
The Rise of Gru, then, is already getting off on the right foot by setting its story in 1976, when an adolescent Gru is aspiring to become a supervillain. This guy is in kid-friendly mischief mode as he tries to land a spot on the supervillain team The Vicious Six, led by Belle Bottom (Taraji P. Henson). While auditioning for the group, Gru, after being told he's too young to be a supervillain, steals a precious medallion that The Vicious Six need for world domination. Once this heist results in Gru getting kidnapped, it's up to a plucky trio of Minions, Kevin, Stuart, and Bob (the lead characters of the first Minions movie) to save their boss.
For better and for worse, The Rise of Gru is built primarily on individual gags and character designs that director Kyle Balda and company found amusing. More often than not, that's enough to make the movie an amusing enough distraction, especially since the design team went all-out to give the supervillains over-the-top costumes. Nunchuck, a Nun who wields nunchucks and has a penchant for violence, is an especially great creation who spawns some of the best visual gags in the whole movie. All the colorful foes show a lot of imagination and are a big reason why The Rise of Gru proves to be a bit better than expected. This isn't a movie about diluting villainy to be a suburban dad, it's about embracing kid-friendly chaos.
The Minions themselves still can't quite sustain a whole movie, but there's no denying that they can still land some amusing gags, like the hysterical sight of them all swaying to and fro sadly while a somber Carpenters song plays. Plus, give them the right character to bounce off of, and they become especially humorous. Michelle Yeoh specifically makes for a great straight man to their antics in her supporting role as Master Chow, an acupuncturist who teaches the three main Minions the art of Kung Fu. The quiet gag that nobody in this universe is ever that unnerved or surprised by the existence of these sentient corn pops has surprising value as a running joke.
Minions: The Rise of Gru made me chuckle more often than not and it never bored me in a runtime that thankfully doesn't exceed 80 minutes. Unfortunately, it's weighed down by some heavy problems, including a groan-inducing reliance on fan service. Like so many prequels, The Rise of Gru is here to answer questions you never asked about your favorite characters. By the time the film ends with dialogue meant to provide a backstory for why Gru would want to steal the Moon in the first Despicable Me, my eyes were rolling so hard they were practically rolling out of their sockets. Like a lot of Illumination titles, this feature also suffers from having way too many plotlines that can't quite congeal properly in the third act. This animation studio has a real problem with trying to do episodic storytelling and then swerving back into a conventional narrative for the third act. That hat trick can be accomplished, but I don't think the writers of the Minions movies are up to the task.
Again, reviewing Minions: The Rise of Gru is a bit of an odd task. Judging by the hordes of people who've seen it (and in suits no less), you've probably already decided whether or not the fifth entry in the Despicable Me saga is for you. The film itself is all surface-level pleasures, without ever offering the truly surreal zaniness of classic Looney Tunes or SpongeBob SquarePants shorts to take its wacky comedy to the next level. I'm still not sure the world of Despicable Me could ever sustain more than one movie, but The Rise of Gru is a more consistently amusing than usual expansion of that universe, though one still bogged down by many familiar flaws in this franchise.
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