Does not have the snarky attitude and the good humor of the first installment.

Rating: 3/10 (31 August 2015)

Whereas Despicable Me was a movie remarkable for its unique sense of humor and unconventional story, starring an evil genius along with his army of delightfully stupid sidekicks, the sequel *and* the prequel are sadly dumbed down to yet another film that can be described merely as "cute" and I guess "funny".
The first movie set high expectations and the minions were a raging success. Regrettably, most people enjoyed mostly their cute looks and silly antics, and less so the sarcastic point of view that elevated them from adorable, silly sidekicks, the kind that's present in every other movie, to hilarious creatures of pure bliss and stupidity that get anything done out of pure dumb luck. The second movie softened most of the sharp edges, toning down the underlying sarcasm and mischief, and finally the prequel, "Minions", barely feels anything like the first except that it includes minions and "evil" people. I put that in quotes, because even the "evilness" gets dumbed down during the series, from hilarious acts of random and sincere malevolence -like popping a passing kid's balloons or letting your dog take a dump in the neighbors yard- in the first one, to cliché stuff like stealing the queen's crown in the last - that one had me gasping "oh no" right from the trailer. Because the theft of the symbol of the British monarchy is the one thing that will keep people from ages 5 to 95 sitting on the edge of their seat.
The use of a narrator should immediately alert the viewer that this is a movie whose selling point is "adorable yellow creatures doing silly stuff for an hour and a half". Sure, there's a plot to keep things moving as well, but it's blatantly obvious that the Target Audience is mainly people that can spend 30 or more minutes watching videos captioned "lolcats".
This is a warning to the prospective viewer, who might expect something similar to Despicable Me: this here is definitely NOT an unconventional movie about hilariously dumb creatures in search for an evil master to do questionable deeds with. It is a movie about funny little thingies acting all cute and getting involved with evil masterminds (I wonder why they even kept that part, I mean these new minions are so softened up that any association with evil seems out of place. Some could argue that this is before they met Gru, so he hasn't trained them to be really nasty yet, but they're the same way in the second movie with Gru too.) Most of the funny scenes are already shown in the trailers, and almost all of them consist of minions saying silly incomprehensible things or making funny sounds to inanimate objects.
To my disappointment, the series has taken a direct turn towards the cute silly minions featured in memes about eating too much, sleeping too much and being single. If you liked the first for its fresh sense of humor, do not watch. If you liked it for the funny thingies that do funny stuff and are adorable, watch em all-- the last two come complete with "awwwww" moments to hug your cat under the blankets while eating chicken nuggets. Okay movie as a standalone, but another sad continuation of the Despicable Me series.