Minions: The Rise of Gru

The pesky emblems of mischief and cruelty are back for a fifth round of lunacy and destruction.

There is no denying that the Minions have an enormous following with the young. The series’ mind-set certainly taps into a certain infantile lust for all things chaotic, nonsensical and flatulent. Like a mad children’s tea party, the more mess, noise and jelly the better. In a golden age of computer animation, where Pixar is (usually) pushing the boundaries of what is possible in both wit and imagination, it is dispiriting to realise that the highest-grossing animation franchise in history belongs to the Minions’ empire.

It all began with Despicable Me twelve years ago. This was the story of a criminal mastermind called Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) who was hell-bent on stealing the moon. To aid him at every step of the way was his army of minions, a throng of small, yellow beings that chirped gibberish and relished exacting violence on each other. Despicable Me went on to gross $543.2 million worldwide and so we then had Despicable Me 2 (international gross:  $970.8 million) and then the origins story that was Minions ($1.159 billion). The last named went back in time to reveal that the incoherent critters were committed to serving “the most despicable master around”, but following a series of unfortunate events they managed to terminate such bad eggs as a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a brutish caveman, a fiendish pharaoh, Napoleon and even Count Dracula. Then they settled on Gru.

The second prequel, Minions: The Rise of Gru, begins in 1975 and introduces us to a schoolboy Gru (again voiced by Steve Carell) who dreams of joining his favourite band of criminals, the Vicious 6. When, however, he fails his audition to enlist, he teams up with the gang’s deposed founder, Wild Knuckles (Alan Arkin). And, along the way, the Minions Kevin, Stuart, Bob and Otto get up to no end of trouble.

Flaunting its interior logic like trapped gas, The Rise of Gru at least betrays a degree of consistency. After one character has (literally) run through a brick wall, the hole in the wall remains in every subsequent shot (as do other various remnants of destruction). Conversely, in one scene the Mona Lisa is stolen from a bank in San Francisco, while in another Otto is befriended by a biker in Death Valley and given a Minion-sized helmet, as if conjured out of thin air. Of course, this nonsense won’t bother your average five-year-old, so long as the next outrageous set piece arrives with a bang. At times, it all feels like the film has been built around which songs the producers could afford the copyright to. One scene, in which Kevin, Stuart and Bob take over the controls of an aeroplane, is set to the strains of Johan Strauss’ Blue Danube, rather tainting one’s memory of another aerial sequence from 2001.

What is perhaps most worrying about the phenomenon is the apparent leniency of rating bodies. While the Motion Picture Association of America passed the film with a PG, the British Board of Film Classification saw fit to give it a ‘U’ for “mild comic violence, very mild scary scenes and rude humour.” Really? Besides the promotion of violence, lying and theft, there is torture and characters are frequently set on fire, culminating in a sort of pornographic excess for the younger appetite. For many parents (and guardians), the exposure to such inanity will be the equivalent of being force-fed cultural rat poison.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Voices of  Steve Carell, Pierre Coffin, Taraji P. Henson, Michelle Yeoh, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Alan Arkin, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Danny Trejo, Lucy Lawless, Jimmy O. Yang, RZA, Will Arnett, Steve Coogan. 

Dir Kyle Balda, Pro Chris Meledandri, Janet Healy and Chris Renaud, Screenplay Matthew Fogel, Ed Claire Dodgson, Music Heitor Pereira, Sound Tim Nielsen. 

Illumination-Universal Pictures.
88 mins. USA. 2022. UK and US Rel: 1 July 2022. Cert. U.