OH, GRU AGAIN

Five films in, the Minions are still an unpretentious, charming good time

SERGIO Pablos must own a swimming pool filled with Dom Pérignon, because he’s the genius who created the Minions. Those yellow talking Tic Tacs are the best part of the enormously popular “Despicable Me” franchise, which has grossed $3.7 billion worldwide since it debuted in 2010.

With ho-hum names such as Bob and Kevin, they speak in helium-pitched, gibberish SpanFrench-talian, hit each other with blunt objects and giggle about their pain. Nothing more. And yet it is damn near impossible not to love those little scamps.

A simple pleasure

The hyperactive henchmen’s farcical antics are back in the franchise’s fifth film “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” an enjoyable prequel explaining how the titular reformed supervillain (voiced by Steve Carell) succumbed to evil as a 12-year-old eccentric outcast.

While a tad too light, as these films often are, nobody is making animated characters as funny or likable (or marketable) as the Minions.

This time, little Gru — growing up in the groovy 1970s — is obsessed with a Suicide Squadesque group of villains called the Vicious Six and dreams of joining their ranks. When one named Wild Knuckles (Alan Arkin, a natural voice artist) disappears, Gru interviews for the gig but enrages the Six by stealing a powerful Chinese medallion that can unleash “the power of the Zodiac.” Destroy the world, yada yada.

Gru gets kidnapped and taken to San Francisco, and his obedient little Oompa Loompas go on a road trip in search of their “mini-boss!”

The plot is as simple as it gets, which makes for a nice anecdote to the competing “Lightyear,” a film that sometimes falls into that old Pixar trap of being too smart for its own good.

The Minions, on the flip side, are not Mensa candidates. They’re stooges.

The story exists, for the most part, to put them into a bunch of silly situations.

Bob and Kevin go full-on “Catch Me If You Can,” dress up as pilots and fly a commercial jet to California . . . with plenty of turbulence.

They meet Master Chow (Michelle Yeoh), a San Fran acupuncturist who moonlights as a kung fu expert and teaches them her martial art — in “Rocky” training montage style.

Dumb, dumb Otto, meanwhile, takes to the open road on a motorcycle and visits the World’s Biggest Banana.

He’s also a hopeless romantic, and briefly falls in love with a rock with googly eyes glued on it.

“Rise of Gru” is better than the previous Gru-less flick because the Minions make the most sense when serving a lame-o villain. Still, there is Gru-m for improvement.

Broad appeal

The Vicious Six have personality, but are mostly a missed opportunity. For example, they are voiced by real-life screen baddies — Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Danny Trejo, Lucy Lawless and Taraji P. Henson — but you don’t know it’s them till the credits roll.

Director Kyle Balda’s film looks sharp — most CGI at this level does these days — but audiences don’t expect visual splendor from “Minions” movies. Little more than smooth blobs, they’re a throwback to straightforward newspaper comic strips like “Dilbert” or “The Peanuts.” It’s a brand of comedy that’s appealing to everyone, regardless of age.

If you can’t laugh at a bunch of yellow ovals clad in denim singing Simon & Garfunkel’s “Cecilia,” what’s wrong with you?