Minions (2015) [Blu-ray]
Animation | Comedy | Family

Minions Stuart, Kevin and Bob are recruited by Scarlet Overkill, a super-villain who, alongside her inventor husband Herb, hatches a plot to take over the world.

Storyline: Ever since the dawn of time, the Minions have lived to serve the most despicable of masters. From T. rex to Napoleon, the easily distracted tribe has helped the biggest and the baddest of villains. Now, join protective leader Kevin, teenage rebel Stuart and lovable little Bob on a global road trip where they'll earn a shot to work for a new boss-the world's first female super-villain-and try to save all of Minionkind...from annihilation. Written by Universal Pictures

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, November 26, 2015 -- Minions is a movie made of many simplicities. The journey-based plot is as basic as they come, the characters are essentially a yellow pill with four limbs and an eye or two, the action and humor feel modern animation-stock, and the animation is great but nothing particularly novel or exciting for the 2015 digital age. But the movie wants to thrive on the approachability that comes with that simplicity. It's tailored to the youngest of audiences, viewers who will adore the colors and the gibberish and dismiss the fact these are in fact bad guys because, well, cute>bad. Indeed, it's cute. Really cute. But many in the audience with a vocabulary that's even only a notch more advanced than the movie's main characters may very well find it too much of too little, meaning that the movie is so prone to simply jump from colorful scene to colorful scene and silly audible cue to silly audible cue that the barrage of fluff only exposes, rather than hides, the vacuous center. The youngest kids won't mind. They'll be happy to curl up with their Minions plush and enjoy the silly ride. Older kids and adults may very well find the movie funny, too (and pick up on some of its fun little easter eggs, like when the Minions find themselves literally popping up into the cover of the Beatles' Abbey Road album), but otherwise lacking in pretty much every other area of concern.

Minions have existed since, well, existence, it seems. They live not to better themselves or improve the world around them but instead only to serve the most diabolically evil master they can find. And they've worked for some doozies: the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Dracula, and the Egyptian Pharaohs. But somehow, despite their singular goal of only furthering their master's career in evil, they mess up and wind up killing their boss. The same thing nearly happens when they get behind Napoleon, but the diminutive French conquerer runs them off, forcing them into hiding. Decades pass. They do their best to entertain themselves, but they lack fulfillment. They're not in a rut, they're on the verge of losing everything, including their identity. In a desperate move to save their race, a Minion by the name of Kevin (voiced by Pierre Coffin), along with Stuart and Bob (both also voiced by Coffin), set out to find a new master to serve. Their long, arduous trek around the globe leads them to 1968 New York, which in turn leads them to a villain convention in Orlando where they meet, and eventually win the favor of, the world's first female super villain, Scarlet Overkill (voiced by Sandra Bullock). They return to her home country of England where an epic power struggle, with the Minions in the middle, will decide the future of the nation, Overkill's fate as a super villain, and the Minions' very existence and future path.

Minions embarks on a fairly risky cinema journey, elevating secondary characters from the Despicable Me films -- essentially gibberish-speaking comic relief sidekicks -- to feature film heroes. The result is a steadily generic film, one with big, manufactured adventure and plenty of laughs but a fairly linear and, for a huge animated film, unimaginative story. The film plays on the origins story angle, looking at how the Minions came to be, where they've been, and how they will get to where they're headed, but there's a distinct lack of engaging drama at work. Here is a film that banks entirely on its colors and sounds and leaves behind any sort of meaningful companion subtext that defines the best movies that the digitally animated landscape has to offer, like Inside Out, and makes them a success beyond the external attributes. But that doesn't mean Minions lacks focus. It just chooses to focus on the superficial, and it's so superficially dazzling it's sure to mesmerize the target demographic -- very young children -- with every scene. Even as it's fairly hollow below the surface, the film proves charming and accessible and the characters memorably absurd, a testament to the creators who have made a successful, if not superficial, movie out of a trio of heroes whose actions speak louder than whatever bits of words they mutter.

Minions works just fine as a colorful diversion that will satisfy the kids. In fact, it'll probably delight them. But in a marketplace filled with terrific animated movies that both kids and adults can love for their own reasons, Minions leaves the older crowd in the cold, catering exclusively to those more enticed by sight and sound than story depth and purpose. That's not a bad thing, and there's a reason why the movie cleaned up at the box office: it knows its audience and delivers what its audience wants. It's just a bit more focused on its younger audience's immediate wants and needs rather than trying to expand into a multigenerational classic. Universal's Blu-ray release of Minions delivers high end video and audio. An fair amount of brief extras are included. Recommended.

[CSW] -2.8- What fun characters mouthing multi-language pseudo-meaninged gibberish (as opposed to just gibberish). What a great start with a series of interesting minion history snippets (all of them already in the trailer - yes, those are the best bits and nothing else in the rest of the movie comes close). What frustration when the gear just gets stuck - and the whole thing numbingly grinds into predictable land with uninteresting plot, an array of boring characters … blah blah … and ends up just another multimillion gibberish animation. After the first 10 mins, Minions is plagued by too many unnecessary pointless characters, plain villains, inconsequential dialogue and actions … and the boredom (and depression) that the Minions experience on screen is unfortunately also paralleled at the same time by the audience and never really lifted up after that. The whole thing is so bland that the leery voice of Young Gru right at movie's end was such a welcomed relief - at last (and alas it was the end) a little promise of inventive fun … but way too late. Watch it, but don't expect too much and you'd probably be mildly entertained..
[V5.0-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.


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