[Review] Minions (2015)

cast/voices: Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm, Michael Keaton, Steve Coogan, Jennifer Saunders, Geoffrey Rush, Steve Carell

directed by: Kyle Balda, Pierre Coffin

Walter Nelson: You’re going to Villain-Con, aren’t ya?

Bob the Minion: Villain-Con!

I really, really, really wanted to say something good about “Minions” or what happens when you give the tiny ones of ‘Despicable Me’ their own movie. Sadly, beside a few fun moments, I can honestly say that I’m not in the target audience of this movie or of the Minions promotion of all sorts. They’re cute, they can deliver a few good moments, blessed be their gibberish but a whole movie is too much to be carried by Kevin, Stuart and Bob.

Sandra Bullock gets her shot to play a villain, Scarlett Overkill is brash and ambitious yet her efforts seem too over the top and not worth of being remembered after you walk out of the cinema.

What is the purpose of this movie? To give us a sort of timeline of the Minions and how they’ve evolved from unicellular beings to pills shaped creatures. They’re cute, they speak a funny language, we laugh while we see them try to find a powerful villain to serve and fail miserably at it. T-Rex, Dracula, Napoleon fall short of surviving the yellow banana loving beings and the Minions travel to Antarctica where they create their own haven. Soon they become depressed and Kevin decides to roam the Earth and find a villain for his tribe to serve. That’s it. That’s the plot, we roll with the action set in the 1960’s and we can congratulate the music master himself, Heitor Pereira who gives a nice golden oldies mix.

We are given small treats of the previous movies and of Gru but everything seems a collection of  scenes put together with no other purpose than to add another notch to the franchise. It will go big, it is a jolly good fun for the box-office summer, one of the movies many waited for but after a few laughs there’s nothing else to wait for.

Edge and Back: 6.5/10