Review of Minions (2015) by Dan L — 24 Sep 2017

I like the minions when they were in Despicable Me because they were side characters. They were used moderately, and in moderation, they were actually pretty funny. But making them the main characters in a movie is like being served coleslaw as the main dish.

Minions is obviously a movie that's trying to profit of the popularity of the banana-loving yellow species that speaks gibberish. I played this movie on Netflix for the kids and they absolutely loved it, but I got bored of this film once the novelty wears off, and it wore off quick.

Because the minions doesn't speak in a language that's familiar to the audience, a lot of the humour relied on slapsticks. Minions is ABSOLUTELY a kids movie. Kids will enjoy it, but for me, the lack of structure made this movie quite hard of watch. Whereas Despicable Me had heart and substance, Minions is ultimately a montage of minions doing silly things. There's a dance scene that made the kids laugh, but I just cringed.

Not going to lie, I barely payed attention to this film. It was a film that I played on Netflix to settle the kids down while I played with my phone. Even though I didn't pay attention to the movie, I understood almost everything because it's a very simplistic kids film. The only thing I didn't understand was how did one of the minions become a giant? Because that's the part I completely missed.

I did try to watch this movie by myself, but I tuned out when the minions were hitchhiking. That's how far I could tolerate this film, and the hitchhiking scene was 20 minutes into the film. Sandra Bullock and Jon Hamm were kind of enjoyable, but there's not much to their character. I don't hate this film because I knew what kind of movie it was going to be and I knew that I'm not the target demographic. There were a couple of laughs and it succeeds as a kids film, but I prefer kids film that are more family-oriented.