Min­ions: The Rise of Gru

I’m sor­ry but this is not a Min­ions movie. Who is the cor­rect per­son to direct my ire/​a law­suit against for this mat­ter? By my strict cal­cu­la­tions, the film Min­ions: The Rise of Gru, focus­es on the goo­gly-eyed mon­keyshines of the afore­men­tioned ​“Min­ion” char­ac­ters for less than the legal­ly-required 63.5 per­cent that would jus­ti­fy the film’s mis­lead­ing Min­ion-based nomenclature.

Imag­ine tot­ter­ing along to the cin­e­ma, gath­er­ing up all the yap­ping knee-highs, shelling out a small for­tune for snacks, every­one ready-and-primed to enjoy an ani­mat­ed spin-off block­buster that focus­es on the best and fun­ni­est char­ac­ters in the Despi­ca­ble Me fran­chise, and find­ing that you’ve been mas­sive­ly short changed. I would argue, m’lud, that this is in fact a Gru movie rather than a Min­ions movie. It’s the fourth Despi­ca­ble Me movie. The tit­u­lar suf­fix ​“The Rise of Gru” is doing too much heavy lifting.

Shift­ing away from legal ques­tions regard­ing the movie’s title and mar­ket­ing, its gen­er­al lack of focus on the Min­ions also serves to make it an infe­ri­or prod­uct. Its sto­ry, which zeroes in on aspi­rant pre-teen super-vil­lain Gru (voiced by Steve Car­rel), is more inter­est­ed in celebri­ty crim­i­nal cadre The Vicious Six, led by Tara­ji P Henson’s Belle Bot­tom, than it is on the lit­tle yel­low fel­lows we all love so much.

Kevin, Stew­art and Bob all get a semi-decent run out, and there’s a sequence in which they’re being taught Kung Fu which does, in fact, raise the odd smirk, but in the main this is a film which has absolute­ly noth­ing new to say about the Min­ions, who they are, their dri­ve, their dreams, their evo­lu­tion as char­ac­ters and as a world-beat­ing brand node. What’s the point in hav­ing the full pow­er of the Min­ions IP at your fin­ger­tips and then doing absolute­ly noth­ing with it?

The gen­er­al dearth of direc­tion on this project creeps over to the script itself, where scene after scene falls strange­ly flat. It’s like, not only have the mak­ers not giv­en them­selves a conceptual/​thematic north star, but they’ve flubbed the lit­tle com­ic inter­ludes that not only jus­ti­fied but bol­stered the first spin-off film.

It’s by no means hor­ren­dous or offen­sive, but it’s just a chron­ic bore, anoth­er film that will like­ly join the Bil­lion Dol­lar Box Office club, but not a sin­gle per­son will be able to tell you how and why it man­aged to get through the front doors. Gru, it tran­spires, is short for Gru­el, of the cin­e­mat­ic vari­ety. And to the scads and scads of adults set to accom­pa­ny their younglings to this ter­mi­nal­ly mid affair, take along your Sudoku and a read­ing light and thank us later.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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