When it was announced that the Minions from the Despicable Me franchise were getting their own spinoff film, many people weren’t all that excited for it. This was mainly because many people were tired of the Minions and felt that the Minions couldn’t hold their own as main characters rather than side characters. Thankfully, I am a huge fan of the Minions and thought that I’d love to see them as the stars of their own film, so I was quite excited for this movie. Did I end up liking it? Well, let’s find out!
The film is a sort of “origin” story for the Minions. It basically tells the story of how the Minions have been here since time began pretty much.
And ever since their existence, they’ve always had a desire to serve the worst villain that they could find. Some of their masters included dinosaurs, cavemen, Egyptian pharaohs, Dracula, and Napoleon. The bad thing though was that they always managed to somehow accidentally kill their masters one-by-one.
After being chased to icy lands after killing off their last master, the Minions developed their own civilization while hiding there for decades. After a while, they soon grew bored and lacked a purpose in life. As a result of this, three Minions, Kevin, Stuart, and Bob head out on a quest to find a new villain to serve to bring purpose back into their lives.
And that’s about as much of the plot as I’ll give away. So, is the film good? Oh, definitely not! First of all, the plot is filled with holes! There are plotlines that don’t go anywhere, characters who act strangely against their personalities, etc. It’s just a huge mess! For example, there’s a scene where one of the Minions obtains a wreath that says “Sorry” on it to apologize to a villain named Scarlett Overkill, voiced by Sandra Bullock, about something. That goes absolutely nowhere. There’s also a scene where one of the Minions befriends a rat only to have to break the friendship up a few minutes later. That goes absolutely nowhere as well.
But, disregarding this weakness of the movie, do I dislike the movie? Honestly, the first time I watched this, I watched it in the theater and really disliked it! However, after watching it again on DVD, I found myself enjoying it much more! Why is that? The only reason I can think is that I usually don’t go to theaters to watch movies. So, the fact that I had to pay to see this in the theaters probably made me expect a masterpiece from this film. And when it wasn’t a masterpiece, I felt like I hadn’t gotten my money’s worth. Whereas, when I watched it on DVD, I had gotten the DVD from my local library, i.e. for free. So maybe when watching it for free, my expectations were quite lowered so that I was able to enjoy it more? I don’t know. Whatever the case may be, I still don’t think it’s a good film, but there is a level of enjoyment now that I feel for this film that I didn’t feel the first time I saw it.
I mean, it’s great to see more about the backstory and the culture of the Minions. I especially love how the Minions’ language is composed of vocabulary from multiple languages including Spanish, Malay, Italian, German, English, Hebrew, gibberish, etc. Being a fan of languages, there’s just something amazing about being able to sometimes understand what a fictional species of yellow subservient organisms are saying!
Regarding the animation, it is what you’d expect from Illumination Entertainment, so no disappointment there. The voice acting is nothing really amazing though, in my opinion. I didn’t think Sandra Bullock or Jon Hamm were anything worth writing home about. Again, the only thing that stood out in this department was the voices of the 800+ Minions all done by the director, Pierre Coffin, himself.
Summing up, I can not describe this film as being good nor can I say that it deserved to make over a billion dollars in the worldwide box office! But, I also can’t dismiss the film entirely and call it one of the worst animated films ever. For an animated film about side characters being made into main characters, I thought it was handled in a much better way than a film like The Penguins of Madagascar, for example. But, if you feel that this film deserves nothing but your hate, I can’t say that I don’t see where you’re coming from.
The Animation Commendation 
I actually had the reverse experience of you. I excused a lot at the theater and on the rewatch it was much worse than I remembered. Most importantly both times it didn’t make me laugh, not once. I think it’s a real clunker.
Cool, I can understand where you’re coming from. I personally did laugh a few times throughout the film.
Do you feel Despicable Me 2 was better?
Yes much better. It had better jokes and we needed Gru and the girls. The minions are good side characters not the main show.
I thought it was cute, entertaining to watch once, but definitely not a “quality” film. But yay for supporting the local library!
Yeah, it’s definitely not a “quality” film.
And oh yeah, forgot you work at the library, lol! I’m a huge fan of the library and have been going for years! I usually go at least once or twice a week.
Yea, I usually lower my expectations on a lot of things so that I can be surprised and enjoyed the thing ;). I love minions, haha!
Yeah, they’re awesome characters!