Another step down

Rating: 4/10 (28 July 2015)

"Minions" is the third full feature film from the "Despicable Me" franchise, but this one has the little funny yellow creatures in the center instead of Gru. Let me start with the positive aspects. They made a good decision to focus on 3 minions and not on the entire gang. The music was nice, some well-known songs. And all in all, the Minions were not really the reason why this film did not turn out well in my opinion. Their scenes were mostly okay, sometimes even pretty funny. With that I am referring to the first roughly 40 minutes, everything before London. The way in which the trio was recruited was well done. The scene where one Minion is so starved that he thinks the other two are bananas is good too. The scenes in which the Minions serve several famous evil guys in history are funny too. Obviously they did not dare to pick Hitler as this is a film mostly for kids, but the likes of Napoleon were interesting inclusions too. And I also liked the first appearance of Scarlett Overkill when she recruits the Minions. However, when the action turns to London, it all gets worse fairly quickly. The whole crown-stealing Queen-related plot did nothing for me and Scarlett Overkill was a pretty forgettable villain as well, just like her husband who wasn't even a real villain.
You have to ask yourself the question: Do more minion madness and Mrs. Overkill make up for the lack of Gru (except a very brief cameo early in the film and a slightly longer one towards the end), the three girls and other central characters. I have to say the first is still my favorite film. The way the girls were introduced was nice and it was not actually a film about beating the bad guy in the end, but about Gru making a connection with the trio. Lots of heart in there and a nice story. The second film was good too. I quite liked El Macho as a villain, but I did not like Lucy that much. Still, all in all it was a decent watch with many funny parts. A lot of these are missing from this movie here. Occasionally, I had to smile, especially in the first half hour, but near the end, it just gets really chaotic and uninteresting in my opinion. Also I did not like the way they finished the film with Gru getting in charge of the Minions. It was obvious they would close the film with such a reference, but it felt really rushed. "Minions" runs for roughly 90 minutes, which is pretty much the same runtime like the previous two films. However, in my opinion, they should have made this prequel to "Despicable Me" a 25-minute short film instead. As a full feature film, this did not work out so well. I cannot say a lot about the voice actors here as I watched a German dub in my local theater, but the way this film was heavily advertised with Scarlett Overkill I really expected a better and more memorable villain.
There is a 3rd "Despicable Me" film planned for 2017 and I hope they can step it up again. Then again, if they bring back Gru and the girls, it is almost by definition already better than this film here I believe. I am not surprised they aren't getting the same audience numbers as for the second film and probably not the same awards attention either. They need to really be careful now that this franchise will not become a sell-out. It would really be a pity as I believe there is still potential for 2 or 3 pretty good sequels. Let's see if they can deliver with the next one again. As for "Minions", it's the worst entry so far and I cannot recommend it.