Minions: The Rise of Gru (Balda, Abelson, and del Val, 2022)

There are two ways one can go with a review of Minions: The Rise of Gru.

The first is to admit that it was amusing. Full stop. Maybe there is no other criteria to apply to such a film.

The second is to wrestle pointlessly and perhaps needlessly with any sort of justification or defense of a critical estimation. What are the reasonable expectations one can have for such a film? Do genre and target audience matter? How pleasurable does it have to be to justify the price? How much does one’s viewing situation (context) matter? How many more opportunities will we get in our lifetime to see (or hear) Julie Andrews? Do the increased pleasures of being in a theater compensate for the increased work of getting out of the house and paying for a gallon of gas?

The questions one could ask about a review of The Rise of Gru are probably greater than those one could ask about the movie itself. Gru wants to join the MCU’s (Minions Cinematic Universe) version of the Sinister Six, a collection of supervillains. They have just backstabbed their founder and invite Gru to apply to fill the recent vacancy.

The first act is charming and fun in a 70s-spy send-up. There are references to period music and films (“I’m walking here!) and the plot moves along at a brisk enough pace. But once the first act is over, the story proper turns into a long chase and rescue, with time split between Gru’s story and that of the Minions.

I liked Despicable Me quite a bit but didn’t care for Minions, so every time this sequel threatened to become a Minions movie, I lost interest. Their physical humor is aimed at the youngest possible audience (and the tyke brigade chuckled heartily at each butt cheek in the test screening). I suspect the film was trying to give something for the kids and something for the adults, but the mix was a bit too much towards the former, with each Minions episode making me more impatient and distracted as the story progressed.

So that’s a diffident “no,” from me, but, full disclosure, the person I was the film with said, “I was amused, and that’s all I ask for from such a film.”