Both Despicable Me and its sequel present a wonderfully outlandish world wherein supervillains reign supreme and where even a guy as curmudgeonly as Gru can find his dark ambitions softened by a trio of little girls. However, while the franchise has established both Steve Carell’s Gru and his adopted daughters (remember “It’s so FLUFFY!”?) as beloved characters in their own right, it is Gru’s mischievous Minions that have become the breakout star of the films. Now, as if beckoned by the call of the untold fortune awaiting at the box office, Universal brings an entire film devoted to the yellow little creatures.
Minions quickly establishes the creatures long history on this planet and their never-ending search to find a master to serve. When the Minions find themselves without a boss, three of them – namely, Kevin, Stuart and Bob (all voiced by co-director Pierre Coffin, who has worked on all three films) – venture on a journey to find a villain bad enough to serve. Ultimately, they wind up at Villain-Con (a clear parody of San Diego Comic-Con, despite its Orlando setting) and end up crossing paths with Scarlet Overkill (Sandra Bullock), a dastardly woman who just might be the perfect employer for the Minion tribe.
Let’s get this out of the way first: Minions is silly, nonsensical and completely designed as a marketing device to sell toys or other assorted merchandise bearing the goggled eyes of its childish leads. It doesn’t do anything particularly ground-breaking and certainly doesn’t feature the next-level storytelling of something like Inside Out (or even the heart of the two Despicable Me films).
However, the appeal of the Minions – for both children and children at heart – lies with the pure unadulterated child-like glee with which they react to the world around them and, naturally, cause a little trouble along the way. The story in Minions is mostly just an excuse to let the franchise’s most popular asset run amok, and those searching for much meaning are already on a fool’s errand.
Of course, there’s still undeniable fun to be had by joining these little guys on a whirlwind adventure that spans the globe, and despite the fact that many of the plot developments are slapdash in their execution, the Minions encounter a number of laugh-out-loud moments that will have kids giggling uncontrollably even when their parents elicit only a chuckle or two. The downside: quite a few of them were included in the film’s marketing campaign, including the fun montage of the Minions’ former bosses.
Bullock and Jon Hamm have a blast as the film’s primary villains, with the latter channelling a mod persona (the film is set in the late 1960s, by the way) that takes him about as far from Don Draper as possible. The Despicable Me films have always elicited outstanding vocal performances capable of rendering A-list stars largely unrecognizable. While the Minions cast doesn’t illustrate this quite as well, it makes a strong impression nonetheless.
As for the three Minions at the film’s center, they are developed enough for the purposes of the film and wisely give a concrete face and personality to the seemingly endless hordes of these creatures. Moreover, Minions uses a ton of storytelling tricks, such as narration and the introduction of supporting human characters, to compensate for their lack of intelligible dialogue. This strategy works well, for the most part, and paves the way for a crowd-pleasing reveal that bookends the film and could queue it up for a sequel.
While nowhere near as strong as either of the two films that precede it, Minions stays true to what made these characters such stars in the first place, while expanding their backstory and opening the doors for further standalone adventures set in the world of Despicable Me. The film is lighter, airier and more frivolous than its predecessors but fits neatly within the series, which remains one of the most consistently entertaining animated franchises running today.