Minions, the scene-stealing little yellow pill-shaped babblers from
the Despicable Me movies, have been
spun off into a feature film all their own. You could say they’ve gotten this
honor because, with a distinctive look and elemental appeal, they’ve proved
themselves instant members of the Cartoon Characters Hall of Fame. You could
also say it’s because they’re a money-minting merchandise machine. It’s a bit
of both. Minions follows the title
group’s antics from before they met up with Gru, their
supervillain-with-a-heart-of-gold boss in their earlier films. They’re shorn
free of his story’s sentimentality, involving fighting off worse villains for
the sake of his adorable adopted daughters. Instead, the Minions are careening
on a fast-paced consequence-free zip through sequences of amiably silly
animated slapstick. There’s not much to it, but it’s often too pleasant and
amusing to resist, at least for those of us predisposed to find the Minions
funny.
Screenwriter Brian Lynch and co-directors Pierre Coffin and
Kyle Balda are smart to keep the story simple, the action goofy, and the focus
on the cute, unpredictable lead creatures. What is it that makes the Minions so
appealing? They have visual simplicity, aural abstraction, and physical
malleability. They speak near-total nonsense, and yet because they wobble their
bodies and stretch their little faces, we can always figure out what they’re
feeling. It’s pleasing inscrutability.
They’re ageless, genderless, and timeless, speaking language made up of
gibberish and bits of every language under the sun. But they’re so
strong-willed, we can watch them express elemental emotions. Minions are
mischievous troublemakers, quick to laugh and quick to get angry, easily
frustrated, sputtering and grumbling, or opening up their mouths in blasts of
staccato laughter.
We open on a montage of their failed attempts to find a boss,
the more despicable the better, from prehistoric times on. The Minions (all
voiced by Coffin), wander through the ages inadvertently leading a variety of
employers (a dinosaur, a caveman, a vampire, Napoleon) to their doom. These
early moments play on pre-verbal visual jokes and cartoony energy, while a
booming narrator (Geoffrey Rush) speaks over-emphatically about whatever
silliness we observe – a T. Rex trying to balance on a boulder, a caveman using
a flyswatter on a bear, an army of Minions in Napoleonic uniforms wobbling
through the snow. Eventually, the creatures flee an angry mob into the
wilderness where they hide in a cave for many decades, luckily avoiding work
for Hitler or the KKK while they’re at it.
By 1968 they’ve grown bored of their exile. Three Minions, a
tall one named Kevin and two shorter ones named Stuart and Bob (I could rarely
tell them apart) leave in search of a new home where they can serve a villain. After
a long trek through the wilderness, a rowboat across the ocean (complete with
the old reliable seeing-others-as-giant-fruit hunger pains), and a stop in New
York City, the trio finds their way to Orlando for a Villain Convention. They
hitchhiked, picked up by a deceptively sunny couple (Allison Janney and Michael
Keaton) and their kids, whose family secret is too funny to reveal. At the convention,
they win the affection of the terrifically named villain Scarlett Overkill
(Sandra Bullock, teetering smoothly between sweet and mean), who invites them
back to her place in London and demands they help her execute a heist.
That’s the long and short of the plot, with a series of
manic antics and rubbery cartoon violence twisting and turning its way to a
slaphappy conclusion. The Minions almost can’t quite hold down a full,
interesting story on their own. But every stop on their trip is bright,
colorful, and manic, full of characters and designs appealingly clever and
round. Retro-cool supervillain gadgetry, wardrobe, and architecture fit right
in with a Swinging Sixties London. The likes of The Beatles, The Who, and The
Kinks jump on the soundtrack as the Minions are stuck in a vintage Bond meets Rube Goldberg meets
Thunderbirds aesthetic. There are lots of visual gags from slapstick violence, cultural
iconography, and teasing naughtiness – characters flailing every which way in
loose hectic zaniness. In the center of it all, Kevin, Bob, and Stewart are Looney Tunes crossed with Three Stooges, pliable indestructible
absurdities driven to get a job done, but too incompetent to do it right.
They bumble into conflict with a Tower Guard (Steve Coogan),
a lanky inventor/torture chamber enthusiast (Jon Hamm), and the Queen (Jennifer
Saunders), before Overkill herself turns on them. It's good for conflict. But the people and all their funny chattering and flailing can’t
match the little yellow guys for appeal. The Minions have no emotional arc or
great lessons to learn. Not even Gru could be so purely powered by id. They
want their buddies. They want fun. They want bananas. They’ll do anything to
get back to a comfortable status quo serving Saturday morning cartoon villainy.
There are car chases, hypnosis, disguises, trap doors, elaborate weapons (a
lava lamp gun was my favorite), and mad science gone wrong, but the stakes
never feel all that high. (Look what happens to a time traveling scientist for
an example of matters straight-faced horrifying this movie’s bouncy tone covers
up.) It’s a simple jaunt through rubbery ridiculousness. Minions’ only interest is in tickling you into distraction.
