Movie Review – Minions

One of the things that we have been sorely missing this past month are new releases at the theaters. With Ramadan now officially behind us, releases that were put on hold in deference to the holy month are now flooding cinema houses. One much anticipated film that we finally got to watch last weekend was the Minions.

Picture courtesy : Wikipedia

Let me say straight off the bat that I am a die hard minion fan. Therefore this review may, just MAY, be a wee bit biased. Cute and cuddly yellow pill shaped creatures with a vocabulary that consists primarily of buh-nah-nah? What’s not to love?

The movie had me at the get-go when the Universal theme song at the very beginning was ‘sung’ by a Minion chorus. It was the perfect hook to a rather entertaining movie. The movie follows the adventures of the tiny creatures on their quest for a Boss. The yellow beings are genetically predisposed to faithfully serve the greatest villain of all time. Sadly their success each time is short-lived thanks to their complete ineptitude. Dinosaurs, Dracula, Napoleon and Yeti all fall prey to their well-meant but grossly misdirected ministering.

The movie while hugely entertaining for children (judging from the audience reactions) was also peppered with tidbits for the adults. Right from the evolution sequence at the beginning to certain well loved TV shows to a Beatles cameo to the soundtrack.

Kudos is due to the team behind the Minions. They managed to succeed with a lead character that has virtually no conversational ability. In fact, it is that precise lack of vocabulary that led to quite a few laughs. The astute will pick out a few words in different languages not to mention names of dishes that seemed to stand in for well, just about any word.

Sandra Bullock gave a decent enough performance as Scarlett Overkill, the world’s first female super villain. The woman in me could not help but rejoice at her ‘success’ while simultaneously envying her perfect, never-out-of-place hair.

All of the above notwithstanding, I must say that I prefer the Minions in well, minion sized doses. While a brief 30 minute video would have been compelling from start to finish, this did seem a tad bit stretched. It is probably indicative that I enjoyed the opening and closing sequences more than the actual film itself. All in all a good watch for the toddlers with a smattering of interest for the grown ups too.

So, have you watched the movie yet? If so, what did you think?

P.S. With their abysmal track record for surviving bosses, has anyone managed to figure out how the Minions faithfully served Gru for so long?