Not Quite One in a Minion but Far From Despicable Either

Rating: 7/10 (5 July 2015)

Reviewed by: Dare Devil Kid (DDK)
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
The Minions' brightly colored brand of gibberish-fueled insanity stretches to feature length in their self-titled "Despicable Me" spin off, with uneven but often hilarious results. Admittedly, we had our doubts. Could the Minions carry their own film especially after last year's disastrous "Penguins of Madagascar". Thankfully, this spin off film takes the undifferentiated mass of fun and nonsense synonymous with these nearly identical yellow oval creatures, and successfully channels it into a pleasing movie shape.
Minions, as you will know if you haven't recently awakened from a five-year coma, are the ill-defined, much-loved critters that enthusiastically serve the "Despicable Me" franchise's Gru. Whenever things are getting a bit saccharine between the formerly dastardly Gru and his accidentally adopted girls, the Minions are there to spout gobbledygook, enact pratfalls, and generally lay on the comic relief. In fact "Despicable Me 2" was funnier than its predecessor because it had "more minions", so putting the sidekicks center-stage in order to ramp up the laughs further made sense. The conventional cartoon story arcs of self-realization and redemption are skipped, but any sacrifice in emotional resonance is compensated for by the pace and purity of the fun.
A prelude traces the origins of the species as the yellow organisms evolve from silly, single-celled cheerleaders for nasty underwater predators to silly, jellybean-shaped cheerleaders for the T-Rex. Although the opening "minions through history" sequence proves a very tough act to follow, this slice of burbling slapstick animation did keep me grinning and giggling throughout.
By the time the 1960s roll around, the group is bored and without leadership. It falls upon heroic Minions Kevin, Stuart, and Bob to journey across the globe to find an "evil big boss" they can call their own. The plot follows our adorably unholy trinity from Antarctica to Orlando, where the 1968 Villain-Con unites them with Sandra Bullock's rocket-skirted Scarlet Overkill. Scarlet dreams of being the Queen of England, but a botched Tower of London heist leaves a young Queen Elizabeth II (Jennifer Saunders) in the pub and King Bob on the throne – albeit briefly. It's gloriously silly but still pop-culture- literate stuff, packed with dizzyingly frenetic action and fabulously expressive verbal gobbledygook; the latter largely courtesy of co-director Pierre Coffin.
I started laughing the moment I heard the minions singing the Universal Studios' theme score in their helium-inflected tones, and remained tickled yellow for the following 90 minutes. There's something irresistibly comic about these adorably, amusingly devious little buggers' slapstick pratfalls, the macaronic gibberish they spout and, above all, their blithe bumbling innocence.