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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.

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