Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022) Film Review and Summary
SOFT 7/10
It’s July 1st, 2022, Minions have taken the world by storm. Spearheaded by a marketing campaign with unprecedented aggressiveness, people have begun to embrace Minions as not a silly cartoon movie, but as a way of life. Videos flood social media of groups of people, ranging from teenagers to adults, dressed in formal attire in honor of the premiere of Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022). I am proud to say that I partook in this phenomenon, dressing up with 10 companions as part of our initiation into the cinema that followed. Throughout the entire time in our packed theater, people ironically, and unironically, laughed, clapped, and had audible adoration for the yellow beings. Once the credits started rolling, a middle-aged lady loudly asked the crowd for their reception of what we had just watched, and received a downpour of popcorn on top of her head from her husband. Minions was a chaotically fun viewing experience, and the content itself followed in those footsteps.
In Minions, we are once again reintroduced to Gru (Steve Carrell) and his Minions (Pierre Coffin) with a primary focus on Kevin, Bob, Stuart and now Otto. Instead of the formidable anti-hero that we knew grew to become in the Despicable Me franchise, we see him as a 11-year-old budding flower of evil, desperately wanting to join the ‘Justice League’ of supervillains, called the Vicious 6. Gru longs for serious approval of his dastardly deeds, and feels as though the Minions have been holding him back. In an effort to take the next villainous step in his career, he heads over to their secret lair, hidden in a record store (because it's the 70s), to try out for a spot on the team. A vacancy that has abruptly appeared because of the Vicious 6 betraying Wild Knuckles (Alan Arkin), their founder and former leader. After Knuckles finds a spiritually-powered artifact, called The Zodiac Stones, the group leaves him for dead in order to usher a new wave of younger, and more hip, supervillains.
Gru eventually steals the Stones, but loses them in his escape, causing both Knuckles and the Vicious 6 to chase after him. Knuckles gets to him first, and after realizing that the stones aren’t in his possession, subjects him to torture by spinning him on a giant record-player for 48-hours while listening to the same song. This is the kind of absurd humor that makes a film like this so mindlessly enjoyable. This, and the simple slapstick of the Minions, combine into a satirical force of irreverence that is impossible not to find some form of humor in.
Gru and Knuckles share the common familiarity of being an outcast in a world that they feel so naturally a part of. This ultimately transitions the relationship from kidnapper and victim, to father-figure and son. It’s an adorably hilarious plot arc that serves up moments of absolute insanity. In one sequence, the duo rob the ‘Mona Lisa’ from an “evil bank”. Knuckles performs a fake heart-attack in order to distract the bank’s staff, and Gru takes so long to execute the heist that they start subjecting the old man to defibrillators in his state of full-health.
Somehow, this 90-minute family-friendly film managed to stuff three different storylines into one interconnected plot. There’s Otto, who is the Minion that lost the Stones in the first place and finds himself on a journey to return them to Gru in a way that ends up being reminiscent of Easy Rider (1969) (quite a deep-cut for a Minions film to reference). Then, there is Kevin, Bob and Stuart who learn kung-fu from Master Chow (Michelle Yeoh) so that they have the ability to fight for their “mini-boss’” safety. I didn’t care much for these sequences, as it came off as filler for a film that is already incredibly short. There are a couple moments where the ludicrousness is difficult to ignore, but it was presented more as a gimmicky take on Kung Fu Panda (2008).
Another surprise was how crisp some of the film’s animation was. Belle Bottom’s (Taraji Henson) afro was full of activity and natural movement that swayed it accordingly. Even the film’s action, and slow-motion, felt incredibly smooth and vibrant for animated choreography. For how outstanding the audiovisual quality of most big-budget animated films are nowadays, it’s pretty impressive for aspects of it to stand out, especially in a film like Minions.
Minions: The Rise of Gru usually doesn’t waste its time though, as the film accelerates through these narratives to reach its conclusion that gives us the final context of how Gru and the Minions came to be. It’s hard to want more from a franchise as silly as this one with how much it feeds into the satirical lore that has been built around it, inside and outside of its films. This film is a 10/10 in my heart.