Minions and Baddies,
Minions (dir. Kyle Balda and Pierre Coffin, cert. U) are the tiny cylindrical henchmen of arch-villain Gru in Despicable Me – and this new film is a prequel giving their history. Narrated by Geoffrey Rush, it’s prehistory, as the Minions, whose role in life is to serve whoever is the baddest baddie around, start by following a T-Rex.
Unfortunately, the Minions (all voiced by Pierre Coffin) have a tendency to precipitate their chosen anti-hero into disaster – in the dinosaur’s case, straight into a volcano – so they are frequently changing allegiance. A pharaoh, Dracula, Napoleon – their choices do seem fated rather than feted.
They spend a long spell away from the world, in Antarctica, thus missing two world wars and the chance to follow Hitler, until in the 1960s there emerges a leader, Kevin, who sets out with Stuart and young Bob to find a new villain to follow. Via New York, they join up with a criminal family, Walter and Madge Nelson (Michael Keaton and Allison Janney), heading for Florida for a top villains convention, Villain-Con.
There, female supervillain Scarlet Overkill (Sandra Bullock) is recruiting for a new assistant, with a test of taking from her grasp a ruby. Many try, but Bob manages it when many fail.
The Minions are now devoted to Scarlet, backed by her scheming husband Herb (John Hamm), and their grand plan is to go to England to steal St Edward’s Crown, so that Scarlet may usurp Elizabeth II (Jennifer Saunders). By a miscalculation, it’s minion Bob who gets crowned king, to Scarlet’s displeasure, leading to the Minions’ imprisonment and escape through sewers (more Third Man than Shawshank Redemption).
In a decent ending, the film sets up for the original Despicable Me (and Despicable Me 3, two years off). It is patent nonsense, of course, but full of the nutty chaos that has made the Minions such lovable
characters – and second only to Frozen in terms of merchandise, with close to a thousand separate toy licences worldwide.
The London scenes are quite imaginative, a mix of famous landmarks and inventions like a pub called The Pig’s Spleen, and minions riding corgis through Buckingham Palace – and even a coronation in Westminster Abbey. Trying to detect more than nonsense words in the Minions’ language is an art in itself, with
some word borrowing from other (orto) languages.
The slapstick antics, even in a torture chamber, provide many moments of fun, along with clever cultural references (such as an Abbey Road scene with the Beatles). 60s pop music permeates the soundtrack.
Oddly, at the Reel cinema in Widnes families streamed out during the end credits, even while Minions were still doing fun things on screen, and I alone was left, to see the final three minutes of Minion silliness accompanied by The Beatles’ Revolution. (Why the rush? There isn’t that much to do in Widnes on a Saturday afternoon.) As family fare, it’s fairly inoffensive – except of course for the essential Minion message that it’s OK to seek out evil villains and want to work for them. It’s so ludicrous, even ironic, that maybe, just maybe, some impressionable young Muslim will decide he doesn’t want to be an Islamic State minion.