Minions: Bad, even for villainous henchmen
If you were wondering, “Did they really make an entire movie out of the sidekicks from Despicable Me?” The answer is an unbelievable and unfortunate yes.
Minions is a movie all about those annoying little yellow creatures that, for some reason, people seem to be obsessed with. It explores the origins of these beings, all the way from their prehistoric amoebic ancestors, all the way up to their present adventures seeking employment under the greatest supervillain whoever ever lived. The story starts with the minions down on their luck and depressed after being handedly fired by their last evil leader. With no one to serve, the minions are useless, so one of members of the minion’s tribe named Kevin devises a plan to save them. With the miss-placed enthusiasm of two other minions named Stuart and Bob, they begin one of the most unplanned and boring journeys of all time.
After spending some time traveling the globe searching for employment, the trio get a tip that Orlando, Florida is home to the largest collection of baddies at the annual “Villain-Con.” There, they find work under the greatest and most famous Villain ever, Scarlet Overkill. The entirely American villain then takes the minions across the pond to England where the story progresses to even more ridiculous lengths.
Why anybody likes these things is a complete mystery to me. As far as I’m concerned, minions are some of the most annoying things to ever appear on screen. Speaking a mixture of French, English, Spanish, Italian, and occasionally nonsense, this is probably the closest thing to a foreign language film kids of this generation will ever see. The babble they spit is so obnoxious in fact, that it flat-out ruined the only redeeming quality this movie had—the music.
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While the soundtrack by itself would have been great, having to sit there while these pill-shaped monsters crooned along in their nonsensical language, butchering everything from the Beatles to Jimi Hendrix made me want to scream in anger.
Speaking of screaming in anger, I’m pretty sure Sandra Bullock has no idea how to do it. I expected the academy award winning actress to be the highlight of this movie, but in reality she was actually quite the downfall. She can breathe heavier than anyone else in cinema, but when it comes to inflecting rage in her voice, it just doesn’t come across as anything more than a temper-tantrum.
And it wasn’t just Sandy who let me down, the entire voice cast just wasn’t right. With Jon Hamm, Michael Keaton, Allison Janney and Steve Coogan, I expected a remotely entertaining time, but this just was not the case.
When matched against the only other animated movie in theatres right now, Inside Out, Minions pales in comparison. The story isn’t half as endearing, entertaining or heartwarming, and the animation style doesn’t even come close. Say what you want about Pixar’s unrealistic looking characters with their big eyes and slim wastes, but you’d be a major hypocrite if you didn’t give the same amount of flack, if not more, to this film. The tall ridiculously skinny cartoon characters are absolutely the result of a personal style Universal animation seems to have as of late, but I just don’t like it. It just screams “Look at our kooky style! We’re nothing like Disney!”
If anything, maybe Universal should have paid a little more attention to Pixar however, when they decided to make this film. It reminds me a lot of what happened when Pixar decided to make an entire film around the loveable sidekick Mater from Cars in the disaster that ended up being Cars 2.
When will people learn? Just because a secondary character is a popular part of a first movie, does not mean it warrants its own stand-alone film.
If you’re looking for something to take your family to this weekend, you won’t find it here. Go watch Inside Out, or if you’ve seen it already, just go again. There’s no new fun to be had here with Minions.
