Skip to main content

Review: Minions

Image via Slash Film

When it was first announced that the adorable, banana-loving, yellow minions from Despicable Me would be getting their own feature film, it was hard not to get excited. Then, the trailers began dropping and each was funnier than the last and the excitement for this movie rose incredibly high. Yet for everything that this film had going for itself, it was very hard to walk out of the theater and not feel a little disappointed and underwhelmed by the final product.

For one, almost all of the really funny scenes in the movie were already in the trailers so they didn't have the same effect that they would have if we hadn't already seen them a hundred times before. That's not to say that it was a boring movie by any means, there were still plenty of chuckles throughout, but it was simply hard to find something worth having a real laugh at that wasn't previously shown in the commercials. What this movie showed, more than anything else, was that the minions are fantastic in short bursts but a person can only listen to their gibberish, or Minionese, for so long before it becomes irritating. 

One of the biggest issues I had with this movie was that it seemed to drag a lot longer than it needed to. This movie is only an hour and twenty-eight minutes but it feels a lot longer than that. For an animated film with such awesome characters, we shouldn't have to feel that way. I think that because this story was stretched so much, it lost a lot of its charm and heart. There are no stand-out or quotable moments in this movie, and that is a shame considering all of the potential it had. I truly believe that this film would have done much better if it had been made into a short film instead.

There were some things that this film did well, despite the fact that I seem to be so negative about it. The origin story of the minions was handled beautifully and told in a way that was quick yet clear. It also had a surprisingly good ending in which we saw young Gru show up and make the connection between this film and the previous ones. Despite its many flaws, I still think that this is a film a lot of children can enjoy. Overall, I would give it a 6.5/10.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What's Your Favorite Scary Movie?

What is it about horror movies that draw audiences in to see them?   There is the thrill of being scared, sure, but is that really as far as it goes? I think not. You see, more than any other genre, horror films are a product of their generation and they typically speak to or highlight the societal issues that are going on around the time that a given horror film is made.   In many ways, horror films help us understand or comment on important issues such as race ( Get Out ), sexuality ( It Follows ), and mental/physical/emotional issues ( The Babadook ). Horror is a genre with many faces but for this particular article, I will touch on what I believe to be the best horror subgenres, the slasher film, and discuss why they are important.              I can understand why people may be a bit turned off by slasher films. In many ways they are a lot closer to reality than a monster or demonic horror movie. Many slasher films...

7 Movies That Define Who I Am as a Film Fan

Movies have been a part of my life for as long as I remember. As I have gotten older, I have realized that I love cinema and I wish to be involved with it in any way possible. I see cinema as a way to escape reality and be in a world outside of our own. I love analyzing film and trying to figure what any particular shot in a movie meant or what it was supposed to show. Movies have a way of affecting certain people in certain ways and that's what this list is about. The following list is NOT what I consider to be the greatest films of all time. They are simply the films that have impacted my life significantly. This list might contain minor spoilers/plot points but I will do my best to keep that to a minimum. I hope you guys enjoy this list and I encourage you to watch any of the films on here that you may not have already seen before. This list is not in any particular order. 1.  Hercules  (1997) Disney's Hercules  is one of those movies that I wish people would ...

First Official Trailer for "Suicide Squad"

Image via VanityFair.com The first official trailer for DC's Suicide Squad  has dropped and it is hard not to love it. It does a fantastic job of setting the tone of the movie and introducing the characters without revealing much about them other than their looks. At the same time, there is a wonderful version of the song "I Started A Joke" playing in the background and it enhances this trailer in so many ways and helps build the eventual Joker reveal. When the list of characters that would be appearing first came out, two names stood out to most fans: The Joker and Harley Quinn. And then the casting for said characters were announced and people began paying even closer attention to the project. But then, images of the cast began emerging and while people were absolutely loving Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, there wasn't a lot of enthusiasm for Jared Leto's look as The Joker. The way this trailer was put together almost seems as though it was made for the s...