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Minions Review

Mo' Minions, Mo' Problems

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Chris Tilly Avatar
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Minions are a billion-dollar business. Supporting characters in the first Despicable Me movie, the yellow sidekicks somewhat stole the show, their role expanding in its hugely successful sequel. And with Minion popularity continuing to grow, they’ve now been given their own standalone movie; a spin-off that acts as both prequel and origin story.So the film takes us back to the dawn of time, when the Minions developed from tiny, single-celled organisms into diminutive, banana-loving, nonsense-spouting henchmen whose only goal is to serve the most despicable master they can find.
Via Geoffrey Rush voiceover and a bunch of hilarious visual gags, we therefore witness them evolve through the ages, the Minions locating and serving villains during the Jurassic era, the Stone Age, in Ancient Egypt and through the Dark Ages. But finding a boss is easy, it’s keeping said boss that’s hard, so-much-so that when a series of baddies die in unfortunate circumstances, they retreat to Antarctica to experiment with a master-free existence.

But without a scoundrel to serve, the Minions become aimless and depressed, inspiring one of their number – Kevin (tall, bossy) – to come up with a plan. He’ll set sail for lands anew with fellow Minions Stuart (attention-seeking, one eye) and Bob (eager, optimistic, dumb), in search of the biggest, baddest villain on the planet.

That’s the set-up for the movie, and probably the film’s strongest section. Because the Minions work best when left to their own devices, with no human as funny or downright strange as these lovable oddballs.

But, with the filmmakers perhaps fearing that they wouldn’t be able to carry a feature on their own, the bulk of the movie takes place in New York, Florida and London – in 1968 for reasons that aren’t entirely clear – and features lots of interaction with human characters who simply aren’t as amusing as their yellow co-stars.

So having navigated their way around the Big Apple, the inane triumvirate hook up with a likeable family of bank robbers, and head to VillainCon in Orlando in search of the world’s first female super-villain – Scarlett Overkill.
But, as voiced by Sandra Bullock, Overkill is something of a dud, the character lacking in personality and one-liners, which makes it frustrating that her dastardly schemes quickly become the focus of the movie. John Hamm does his best as her nefarious husband Herb, but again his character fails to make much of an impression.

The action then shifts to swinging ‘60s London as the Minions steal the Crown Jewels, find the fabled Sword in the Stone, and get into a series of jams with some tea-drinking Bobbies and the Queen herself.

Said scrapes result in imaginative set-pieces played out to a toe-tapping Brit-rock soundtrack, but by this point it feels like the film is going through the motions, the spectacle becoming ever larger as the finale nears when what you really want is for proceedings to be scaled back so that the Minions can simply do their surreal thing.

The jokes nevertheless come thick and fast, with enough slapstick and silliness to satisfy young ones, and more mature jokes at the expense of The Beatles, Richard Nixon, and the moon landings to makes their parents laugh.

But it lacks a compelling plot and the heart that made the Despicable Me movies so resonate with audiences, and with the film eventually turning into a Scarlett Overkill vehicle rather than concentrating on the title characters, the whole endeavour feels like it lacks the courage of its convictions.

Verdict

Minions starts strong but quickly runs out of steam, the film hilarious when the title characters are left to their own devices, but failing when the focus shifts to the less interesting human co-stars.

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Minions Review

6.4
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Review scoring
okay
While there might be a great Minions movie to be made, unfortunately this isn’t it.
Chris Tilly Avatar Avatar
Chris Tilly
Official IGN Review
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