4.5/10

Rating: 4/10 (1 September 2015)

You have to give kudos to Illumination Entertainment for having found the cheapest way to make a billion dollars: Minions. They will just sell tickets no matter what with their mix of humor and adorable. Unfortunately, the "cheapest" part of that statement is true for the quality of the movie too and not only for the idea value.
Look, I get it, a Minions movie right away from inception does not have the potential for higher concepts or sophisticated storytelling, so I wasn't excepting the next Pixar movie or a "How to Train Your Dragon" level masterpiece. You might argue the opposite, but out of one thousand movies that you could make called "Minions" there is maybe one that could fulfill the task, yet it certainly wouldn't make a billion dollars worldwide. So I was excited to have some good fun and come out with a delighted smile on my face. Reality is, I came out with a frown.
I will say it up front that there is nothing to get angry about here. This is a more than fine movie to bring children too and I am sure they will have their fun, though they will certainly not come out and talk about it for days as they would have with a "Toy Story". What is bothering is how lazy the filmaking is and how boring the choices are. It is such a package for children only I can't see anyone of the directors, writers, editors etc. putting into this anything more than the lowest standard acceptable. This is really passionless. They always choose to dumb things down and never go for something more sophisticated that could have elevated the joy and the energy. The most bothering example of this is the choice to have narration at the start of the film. Other than being bland it just doesn't add anything and doesn't leave space for what could have been a first dialogue-less 10 minutes of delightful visual storytelling and gags which are replaced by Minions doing exactly what a narrator is telling us, uh what a bore. Not to mention the story overall which culminates in a dull and generic ending that I have probably seen countless times already in animated movies, I was really phased out by then.
I will say that there are redeeming qualities: throughout the film we are served a few smart gags that do deliver some more interesting humor. The minions work overall and don't get boring or annoying, on the contrary they always kept a smile on my face and worked best when they were used for some more intelligent humor, when they were just acting like childish babies they continuously made me check out, they simply don't work like that. It is so much more interesting to have them thrown into unlikely situations and see how they react to it, those were the fun moments for me.
As I said this is perfect for a child, but if you were excepting to have some adult fun with smart gags and sophisticated humor you will be partially disappointed.