MOVIE REVIEW – Not everyone likes the yellow ones (Simsons, Minions), but this story isn’t one of themclumsy army of technicians, in this prequel: Minions: The Rise of Gru, the adventures are all about the up-and-coming top villain.

For us, it was refreshing to see that the absurdity of the situations (sitcom elements) was not over delivered, we got just a modest amount of idiotic laughs. The story unfolds in a linear sequence
still remaining exciting, and the characters of the villains are deepened (in part) and introduced in slow motion as in the production of The Bad Guy. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen such cool SlowMo moments, as for example in Croods 2. Universal Pictures has once again ‘drawn’ beautifully with Illumination but I’d rather not go into the company names.
The characters are cute in their troubled and tangled way – but we feel sympathy with them. Not everyone is evil (at least for the second time), so insidiousness always depends on the situation and action happening around. The colourful characters are edifying the moral message, because a good gang holds always together, while a real evil bang is keen to abuse each other for business reasons.

Habla húngaro por favor…

As an English speaker, I almost always caught one intelligible word per sentence, but these minions can easily catch the Latin American flow so sometimes I was hoping for more Hungarian words, but at least subtitles. Even though the situations and answers are mostly understandable (or at least supposable), I feel 30% information loss while listening to those babblings. And that’s not very equal treatment with the child viewers. However, we were all surprised, when the yellow technicians started to use Hungarian words.
Among them, 4 minions will be permanent companions (and ‘followers’) of Gru, who has more goodness and heroism in his soul than mischief and peccadillo. Of course, sometimes he has to steal some objects, this is mostly because keeping them away from real devil people.

To sum up, the story is about the pursuit of an amulet, while they should stand up for each other, to protect the weaker. To travel from city A to B, where B is San Francisco, to join a martial arts. Gru is foxy, but not yet physically strong, as he is still waiting for his 12th birthday.

Mini Boss makes it big

He would do everything for his comrades, as minions are also on the mission to know Gru in save. Tt was liberating to see that they spared the young people from tear-jerking scenes. The introductory character-building adventure was almost too aggressive, but it fits in a family cinema, as it’s only a few minutes of hard action. The movie is not overlong, nor is the plot arc broken. There are just as many stops, as long as the brain needs. And the mind needs memories, references to characters in the form of photographs, or supporting characters: we get them, although without them, fortunately, the story remains clear.

The young Gru here is a lonely, ostracised, misunderstood weird genius, authentically 20 years in the past, in the funky era. In the decade of vinyl with disco motifs, this is childhood with no questions. These moments evoke our own retro memories: Who hasn’t tried to turn a record backwards? San Francisco brings us the hilly streetscapes, and carnivals for us, they are all eye-catching. Even with my eyes closed, I can still see the cute super evil woman (Belle) in her purple latex dress and microphone hair (with MIC voice too).

Gru is presumably inherited some Russian (and also evil?) genes, his best dream would come to alife if he could join the ‘Vicious 6’, as they are mathematically only ‘Vicious 5’ at the moment.
He keeps a couple of wallpapers and other brand stuffs about the notorious band. This fanaticism makes me reminding of the ‘Turning Red panda’ (Mey Lee) for the endless love in a boy band called 4Town. The Chinese culture is also represented in this film: Minions start to learn karate, while the stolen treasure has spiritual power for evil or good purposes.

Amulet versus Kabala Stone

I see this flat pebble with plastic eyes on more and more screens (e.g. Everything Everywhere All at Once), which is a pretty ridiculous bargain for a magical pendant. The trailer of Minions: The Rise of Gru is generous in showing this epic exchange in detail, it’s been a little too often broadcast in the cinemas, but finally, Gru rises, and that’s the point here. The movie is very well put together,although there were 2 years of delay to the first planned debut, mostly because covid-19 has also risen. The good news is that we can put our hope in a sequence, as the good characters seemingly start a new flight to action. We would like to epic stories in 90s too, as Gru is the most human prankster and anti-thieves with a regiment of bare-breasted mollusc at his side.

At last, a franchise that oozes fun and creative sophistication at every turn. Cinco Paul has written cleverly again. The 3-dimensional view can add extra depth to the vision, enhancing the story itself too. It’s worth spinning the first 3 lines in cinema rooms, because of the close-ups scenes. It’s really recommended to dive into actions with 3D party glasses jumping directly to the ‘Gruniverse’ again.

Jay P. Sonix