One star, but only because we cannot rate a film no stars

Rating: 1/10 (17 December 2018)

Minions - good grief. An hour and a half that I will never get back.
Back in 2015 my son went with his cub/scout group, for a special treat, to see this movie. When he got back I asked him how it was; as a family we all liked the Despicable Me films, and this was part of the deal. Surprisingly he was a little reticent - he loves going to the cinema - and non committal. I now know why.
This is an utter abortion of a film. They could have made 18 five minute cartoons, or maybe two good ones, rather than invest the time this move took to drag out in a full length feature.
There was a plot; not a good one, admittedly, and - weak and lame as it was - it looked like someone had taken just two minutes to outline it on one side of a damp sheet of toilet paper. In crayon.
There were characters; again, not good ones (mostly forgettable, in fact) and the director appeared to have tried to make up for the lousy plot by telling most of the voice talent to ham it up like their lives depended on it. There was also quite a bit on national stereotyping, always the sign of a lazy scriptwriter, or a director looking for an easy life.
Even the animation appeared to be of a lower calibre than the usual Despicable Me quality (!); maybe because this was a movie set in the past, possibly to give the trainees and apprentices some on the job experience, but I suspect it was more just to save money.
The soundtrack was the best thing about this film, but then all you can credit Illumination with is choosing it; yet the target audience is 15 and under - who amongst them is going to listen to or even care about a bunch of songs from nearly 50 years ago?
I like the Minions, as characters. It is a concept that has a history in slapstick, and they can be as violent as can be gotten away with in cartoon form because they are quite obviously not human and appear to be indestructible. They work well as criminal, erm, minions in the Despicable Me films and they do make for amusing five minute fillers on the DVDs; this was one or two five minute cartoons stretched full length and packed with filler to pad out the slack. And there was lots of slack.
I doubt if we'll see a Minions 2 anytime soon. I certainly hope not, anyway.
But then, at the time, we would have thought the same about Sing...