The ideas behind a stand-alone MINIONS movie are solid. Behind every big bad in the world throughout time, there have been little yellow followers who are more than eager to help out, even though most of the time they end up hindering or even accidentally killing their boss, often doing more good than harm. They started out helping out a nasty T-Rex and moved their way through history from cavemen to vampires to Napoleon up to more recent examples, like the ones you might be familiar with in the two DESPICABLE ME films. Most of MINIONS is set in the 1960s, when the Minions find out about a convention in Orlando for villains of all shapes and sizes, and what better place to find a new boss than Villain-Con?
The main attraction at the con is an appearance by Scarlet Overkill (Sandra Bullock), the world's first female super-villain—although she doesn't really do anything all that terrible during the course of the film, not for lack of trying. She has a himbo husband named Herb (Jon Hamm), who adds very little to the proceedings. Scarlet is at the convention to find a new evil support team, and naturally the Minions step up to compete for her attention and affection. The problem is, once the film settles in on this particular storyline, it becomes clear that there isn't much to support a MINIONS movie at all, thanks to a paper-thin screenplay from Brian Lynch (who also wrote Hop and the upcoming The Secret Life of Pets).
What always fascinated me about Minions in general is how bizarre they are in every respect, and I tried to figure out what the differences were among them. Some have one eye, some have two. How do they multiply? Or do they even have to, since they never seem to die. And then there are those voices and that language. I'll give all credit to DESPICABLE ME (the first and second) co-director Pierre Coffin, a French comedy specialist who voices pretty much all the Minions (he also co-directed MINIONS with Kyle Balda, who helmed THE LORAX). I'd never really noticed the complexity of their language before, but it's a mash-up of French, Spanish, English and nonsense, but you always have a sense of what the little guys are talking about. Their immense popularity is astonishing and makes total sense.
In this particular story (as in the DESPICABLE ME films) the Minions stand-out performers are Kevin, Stuart (who plays ukulele), and the squat Bob, whose eyes are two different colors, indicating some sort of "slowness," I'm guessing. The three of them leave their Minion brothers in the frozen Arctic in search of a new boss, which brings them to New York City and eventually on the road to Villain-Con (with the Nelson family, including parents voiced by Michael Keaton and Allison Janney, as the nicest villains you'd ever want to road trip with).
Scarlet's master plan is, for some reason, to steal the crown from the head of Britain's Queen Elizabeth (Jennifer Saunders), so that she can rule the UK (I'm pretty sure that's not how one becomes Queen of England, but let's go with it), and that's about as detailed as things get. With such low stakes, MINIONS is more an exercise in being adorable and quirky, which it is when the focus of the film is just the pill-shaped creatures. I liked the film a little less with each new character addition, because it took away from the goggled henchmen. Bullock doesn't really add anything to the proceedings, and almost more glaring is how unfunny and flat her voice work is. She sounds like she's reading from the page and attempting to put in her evilest voice, but none of it works. Seriously, Geoffrey Rush is the narrator of the story, and he gives a funnier performance than Bullock does. It's a classic case of casting a name over the actual ability to do voice work.
And for those who particularly love the interaction between the Minions and their DESPICABLE ME boss Gru, if you wait long enough, you might get a glimpse of a young, pointy-nosed baddie in the mix somewhere. Minions is certainly harmless entertainment, but it seems unnecessarily cluttered by too much generic villain story. The idea of the Minions bouncing from boss to boss causing mischief as they go would have made for a far more enjoyable experience, but I'm guessing that won't stop at least your kids from enjoying this one as is.
