Rating: ** 1/2

Cast: Pierre Coffin , Sandra Bullock , Jon Hamm , Geoffrey Rush Directors: Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda

Minions the movie works on the premise that if the Penguins of Madagascar could get their own spin off, why not t he popular mascots from Despicable Me? So yellow blobs got their own feature film and t hey are anything but despicable.

So, the movie follows the yellow critters from the dawn of time as they venture where no minion has gone before… all for the search for the perfect evil master (with a Pinocchio-like nose). From the start of time, minions have always existed to serve the biggest-baddest-vilest villain out there. But, of course, terrible things keep happening — mostly due to the loving help offered up by the gibbering yellow pills. And the master ends up *spoiler alert* … dead. Or even worse.

I like how they gave the three main minions some personalities so their characters are more alive on the screen. So, there is Kevin the minion who has to save all of minionkind and so he sets forth on a let’s-find-ourselves-another-good-for-nothing-supervillain mission along with Stuart the minion — a lazy musician — typical teenage rebel. Lazy. Slow. Dreamy. And Bob the minion, of the Bob the builder build, who makes for a cute over-enthusiastic child. For Bob the minion, every questionably cuddly creature is a Poochie . One of my favourite terms of endearment has now been attributed to a rat in the sewers. Just great!

Life Before Gru (BG) is one tough banana to chew. The Mad Men like 60s have a lot of lava lamp-slash-guns, tea-drinking policemen, Beatles, tea and scones, cutesy cars, ukuleles, fixation with royalty and a Villain Con. The perfect place for the minions to bump into a megalomaniac of their choice.

They are helped in their vile task by a family of evil-do-gooders who give them a ride to Orlando where they hope to find a menacing master.

Enter Scarlet Overkill, the first female super villain. Sandra Bullock voices the antagonist and she is pretty good at it too. Scarlet has a surprisingly adoring husband. Who just happens to be an eccentric scientist.

I really liked that the vamp had a loving supportive husband who was perfectly fine playing second fiddle to her. You just don’t see that often these days.

The minions are again on a mission. This time the yellow blabberers go to London. Not to frighten the cat under the Queen’s chair. But to steal the royal crown and get the one in a minion Scarlett her one true wish. The knights in shining denim!

The movie progresses with a couple of chuckles and a few big laughs. The y ellow critters to the rescue — of the villain. The master-slave dynamic might be frowned upon but what else can one expect from yellow blobs driving us bananas? It’s like Scarlet says, “Doesn’t it feel so good to be bad?”

Have you ever read one of those highly forwarded messages which go like… “ if yuo can raed tihs, you hvae a sgtrane mnid ”? Well, to take that analogy further, that’s how the minions make me feel… no proper words, other than the spatter of unrelated terms — but we still understand whatever they want us to. So the dialogues sound like “King Bob!”, “Mazel tov!”, “Kumbayah!” and “BANANA!!!” interspersed with “Paratu!”, “Labatoo!”, “Lukatu!”… you get the drift.

The animation is nice and crisp. Especially, the 100-foot tall giant of a minion. And the wave of yellow ‘buddies’ making their way from Antartica to England en route Australia and India.

But the whole thing just feels kind of rushed and like it belonged on Cartoon Network instead of in theaters. There are some who would say to skip it altogether and watch Despicable Me again.

You know how they say too much of a good thing is bad… Unfortunately, that is what went wrong with the third movie in the Despicable Me franchise which just happens to be a prequel. The idea being that something which works great in spurts needs an entire movie to themselves is slightly stretching the comic relief point a bit.

Only those who get googly-eyed over the goggle-eyed yellow beings and adults who are fine with an uninventive drivel being thrown at them are welcome to this m inions-moving-master-to-master flick. Though, p eople below the age of nine are going to absolutely love the gimmicks.

But why, oh why, are there no female minions in the movie, world???

Watch the trailer here: