The Despicable Me franchise can be summed up overall as, “ehh”. More precisely, if I were giving out star ratings, each film would receive 2 ½ stars out of 4—the typical rating for a sub-par film containing decent content, yet not worth recommending as a “must see” for theatrical viewing. Minions is no exception, being a decently entertaining, yet unremarkable film about some very cute creatures. The story is incredibly straight forward: the Minions have been around since the dawn of time, existing solely to serve the most villainous master around. They continuously move from boss to boss, as the film informs us, “Finding a master was easy, keeping one is where things got tricky”. After failing their latest boss Napoleon, the Minions escape and take refuge in Antarctica—they soon fall into a deep depression after being master-less for so long, prompting one courageous Minion Kevin (Pierre Coffin) to go out in search of a great villain to follow. Alongside Kevin comes the rebellious Minion Stewart and adorable Minion Bob (both also voiced by Pierre Coffin).
Minions finds strength in being very, very charming—if you can’t chuckle a Stewart’s antics or aww every time Kevin wipes smudge off of little Bob’s face, then you may not have a soul. The film’s incredibly swift pacing (combined with its short runtime) means “boredom” is never an issue—what is an issue however is not Minions’ fault, but rather its trailers. For months I’ve seen 4 different trailers for Minions on about 10-15 separate occasions—after seeing the film I can safely say the trailers spoil around 90% of the first hour’s jokes. After chuckling to these jokes a good half-dozen times, they just weren’t funny anymore—only Minions’ finale was safe from such spoilage…yet the humor there is few and far in-between. Minions isn’t bad by any means, with there definitely being worse ways to spend 90 minutes—yet I can’t recommend spending 12 bucks (give or take) to see it in theaters. Minions is a very cute, occasionally funny spin-off which definitely works better as a Netflix/Redbox rental for a dull, rainy day.
