I Want Gru

Rating: 7/10 (3 August 2015)

Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2 were so good that Illustration Studios had to find out how the Minions would do largely on their own. Usher in Minions, a movie about how the Minions came to be and their adventurous path to meeting Gru.
Without Gru the Minions are just not the same and not as compelling. The Minions movie was an experiment with the sidekicks. It's happened before where a movie was good and the sidekick was such a hit the executives decided to give him his own movie. That usually fails. Minions wasn't a total fail but I was definitely yearning for Gru.
The big villain in this movie was Scarlett Overkill, played by Sandra Bullock. She didn't have the appeal or funniness of Gru. Not only did I find her too verbose, she also didn't seem to fit. She was a supervillain, a villain that all other villains aspired to be like. She was at such a level that she needed no help, yet she employed three wayward minions to steal the Queen of England's crown for her.
The movie had its funny moments; most were for kids and some were for an older audience. The Minions themselves were true to form: unintelligible, bumbling and mischievous. I hate to say that the movie was a money grab but by the end that's what it looked like.