Despicable Me, Minions

Move Review: Minions (2015) *WAY Too Much of a Good Thing*

Minions

Frosting is delicious.  It’s awesome.  If you have a spoonful of frosting, you think….oh sweet merciful heavens, this is outstanding.  By spoonful two, you’re thinking….well, I still like frosting but I feel like I’m reaching saturation.  Spoonful three and you’re mind is screaming THERE ARE STILL 90 MORE MINUTES LEFT IN THIS MINIONS MOVIE…..  Point is, something meant to be used to make something ELSE better, may not be a great thing all on its own.  In my analogy, you’re more than likely to be projectile vomiting frosting.  I’m not sure if that’s worse than having to sit through 104 minutes of Minions.

Minions

There’s no doubt that the minions just absolutely stole the show in Despicable Me 1 & 2.  However, in those films, the minions were supporting characters in films that had strong narrative structures that the minion horde would accentuate with occasional hijinks.  Minions would have made a very nice short.  If you took the prologue that explains the evolution of their species and tacked it on to the last 30 seconds of the film, you have everything that’s worth seeing in the film.  Unfortunately, you’ve already seen 90% of that if you’ve watched the films trailers.

Minions

I want to be clear that, previous to today’s frosting overdose, I loooooved minions.  In my previous place of employment (in which I was encouraged to be an adult), minions littered my desk.  The film makes a mistake in separating out three minions (Kevin, Stuart and Bob) from the herd and sending them in search of a new, evil boss.  The minions work best as a nameless force of silly chaos.  Individualizing them means they have to talk to each other a lot.  That means minonspeak.  A LOT OF MINIONSPEAK.  The minons speak in a language of their own that’s a combination of English, Spanish, French and Gibberish.  In small doses, again, cute and funny.  A solid hour forty-four minutes of it will leave you  feeling like someone tried to steam clean your frontal lobe.


Minions

The portion of the film (and by this I mean that portion I suggesting cutting to make a short film) centers around the trio’s journey and eventual employment for supervillain Scarlet Overkill (Sandra Bullock….not a strong voice actor).  The previous films in this series have been so sweet and so cleverly littered with humor that slays all ages, but the never ending pabulum that makes up this film’s plot is just (insert minionspeak).  The film had the second-biggest opening of any animated film in history, so we’re undoubtedly going to get more minions, but if they’re all on their own again, I’ll send my 18 month old nephew to review the film.  Anyone older is going to leave with a headache.

3.25/10 (and I’m being nice)


 

4 thoughts on “Move Review: Minions (2015) *WAY Too Much of a Good Thing*”

  1. Have you ever heard of A Town Called Panic? It’s a series of wonderful French Canadian animated shorts. But they tried turning them into a feature film. The first half is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, but the movie runs out of steam halfway through. It’s way too protracted.

    I sensed that this Minions movie would be a huge misfire when the trailer wasn’t funny or cute. Also when I realized it was going to zero in on just three of them. Jack Sparrow, Beetlejuice, Hannibal Lector… there are certain characters who have power precisely because they don’t have a whole lot of screen time. And the Pirates sequels, and the film version of Hannibal, prove it. Hopefully the Beetlejuice sequel won’t prove it, too


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  2. The Good Dinosaur trailer looks great, BTW. I think Pixar has turned itself around. All the trailers that played before Inside Out were terrible (except for Peanuts). So many CGI films are hyperfrenetic and downright obnoxious. The trailers for them all have the same weird rhythm. It’s like the people making these films are all working from the same guidebook, from the directors right down to the marketers. The people at Pixar are the only ones working from the guidebook Walt used back in the day.

    I miss Don Bluth. He knew what was what.


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    1. Don Bluth was amazing, and Pixar does look like they’re back on track. The Peanuts trailers continue to give me hope. I haven’t felt a wrong vibe from anything I’ve seen there yet and Schulz is holy ground to be treading on in my book, so that’s saying a lot. Minions is just a mess. It feels just like it is: something the studio decided was going to happen and then made it happen before having a story to carry the idea past five minutes.

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      1. Maybe they could have made the film episodic, with the minions going from master to master? The masters would be there to drive the story, but the minions would get most of the screen time? That would be the most obvious solution from where I’m standing.


        If there were crass humor in the Peanuts movie that didn’t jive with who Shultz was, they would be trumpeting it as a selling point, so I’m confident the movie will take the high road. It’s hard to figure out whether Charlie Brown or Snoopy is the greatest character of all time, but as long as Charlie Brown isn’t TOO centered by the end, I’m on board.

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