Film review: Minions - the yellow sidekicks get their own movie
This prequel, showing what the Minions were up to before they met Gru, doesn't quite have the heart of its predecessors
As anyone who sawDespicable Me or its sequel knows, the stars of the show were always the Minions. Those yellow, pill-shaped, dungaree-wearing critters — loyal servants to the evil villain Gru — became a pop culture phenomenon across these two animated adventures. Or at least a "marketing" one. Their own spin-off film was inevitable.
At the helm of Minions is Pierre Coffin, who co-directed the previous two films, though his partner is no longer Chris Renaud but Kyle Balda, whose credits include 2010's Banana, a four-minute Minion short.
With Coffin also back providing voices for the Minions — that weird Euro-babble they speak in — all this suggests it's about more than just merchandising.
Yet this prequel, showing what the Minions were up to before they met Gru, doesn't quite have the heart of its predecessors.
A prologue, narrated by Geoffrey Rush, explains that Minions have been around since time began, simply looking for a villainous master to serve. A T-Rex, an Egyptian pharaoh, and Napoleon all fall foul of their accident-prone ways, sending the Minions scuttling into an Arctic hideout and spiralling into a collective depression - until one day, when a Minion called Kevin decides to find his race a new bad boy to serve. Joining him on this mission is the absent-minded Stuart and the enthusiastic-but-hapless Bob.