Please come back Steve Carell

Rating: 4/10 (27 July 2015)

Like Pixar putting Mater the tow truck in a lead role, this movie also confuses garnishing for the main course. Although the Despicable Me series never made it into Pixar quality territory, the films do entertain largely due to the comic timing and likely input on the script of multi-talented Steve Carell. Leaving these secondary characters in charge results in a tiresome, dragging light entertainment that will stretch the attention span of the younger set (you'll see much texting in the theater during this film). Beyond a lackluster script the basic limitation of the minions is there inability to communicate with the audience. They speak a non- subtitled variant of gibberish. While this was annoying in the Despicable series, having long stretches of it in this film makes for some baffling passages. With affable, approachable Sandra Bullock ineffective as an villain eventually John Hamm's sidekick character becomes the point of focus and, put simply, his English accent is worse than Mike Myer's Austin Powers. Speaking of that series of films, "Minions" is set in 1968 London (mostly). How many of the film's core demographic will get late 1960's English references is a question the marketing department was surely asking when told they would have to sell this clunker (explain the "Abbey Road" cover gag to an eleven year old). To these complaints add one more - the first 20-25 minutes are pure exposition. Towards the end of that period you wonder whether you could just go read the book instead if the all the director plans to do is to explain the tale to you. In short, the Despicable series "Cars 2".