The Minions have existed since the beginning of time. They evolved from single-celled organisms into small, yellow, pill-shaped creatures whose only purpose is to serve history’s most despicable masters. There is one problem with this arrangement. They are very clumsy, and they end up accidentally killing every boss they work for. That is the premise of Minions, a 2015 animated comedy directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda and written by Brian Lynch. It is a prequel to Despicable Me (2010) and the third overall film in the franchise.
Trailer, via Illumination.
A Cannon Fired at Napoleon
The film opens with a history lesson. The Minions drift from one evil master to the next, and each one dies by accident. They fire a cannon at Napoleon while in Russia. After that, they are driven into isolation and start a new life inside a cave. For many years they have no boss to serve. The tribe becomes sad and unmotivated. Three Minions — Kevin, Stuart and Bob — set out to find a new leader.
Geoffrey Rush handles the narration. It is a lot of history to cover before the actual story starts, and the film moves through it fast. This is a prequel, so the audience already knows how the Minions behave. The opening answers a question nobody asked. Where did these creatures come from? The answer is a joke, and the joke is fine. It is not enough to carry a feature.
Three Minions in New York City
In 1968, the three Minions arrive in New York City. They stay overnight in a department store. There they come across a hidden commercial broadcast advertising Villain-Con, a convention for villains in Orlando. The next day they hitchhike to the convention with the Nelsons, a family of thieves.
The Nelsons are voiced by Michael Keaton as Walter and Allison Janney as Madge. This is the best stretch of Minions. The family is a small, nasty unit, and the film uses them for a road-trip sequence that has some shape to it. Then the Minions reach the convention and the movie finds its real engine.
Sandra Bullock Hires the Minions
At Villain-Con, the Minions meet Scarlet Overkill. She is the world’s first female supervillain, and Sandra Bullock voices her. Scarlet hires the three Minions on the spot and takes them to her home in London. They phone the rest of the tribe and tell them to join.
Scarlet has a plan. She wants to steal the Imperial State Crown from Queen Elizabeth II, voiced by Jennifer Saunders. She promises to reward the Minions if they pull it off. She also threatens to kill them if they fail. Her husband Herb, voiced by Jon Hamm, supplies them with inventions to help with the heist.
This is the plot the film has been building toward, and it is thin. Scarlet is a villain who wants a crown. The Minions are helpers who want a boss. There is no third thing. Jon Hamm’s Herb is the more interesting of the pair, mostly because he seems to be having a better time than the script does.
Bob Pulls the Sword From the Stone
The heist goes wrong. The Minions break into the Tower of London and are nearly caught. During the chase that follows, Bob runs into the Sword in the Stone and pulls it free to defend himself and his friends. That removes Queen Elizabeth II from the throne and makes Bob the new King.
It is the one genuinely funny idea in the film. The Minions are so incompetent that they fail upward into the monarchy. Scarlet is enraged that someone else accomplished her dream of stealing the throne. She confronts Bob. He voluntarily gives the throne up in her favor.
That should be the end of it. It is not. Scarlet imprisons the Minions anyway, and the film keeps going. This is where Minions loses its footing. The story has already delivered its best joke, and it does not know how to stop.
A Voice Cast Doing Real Work
The cast is deeper than the material deserves. Steve Coogan voices Professor Flux and a Tower Guard. Michael Beattie voices the VNC Announcer and Walter Jr. Katy Mixon voices Tina. Hiroyuki Sanada voices the Sumo Villain. Steve Carell shows up as Young Gru, a nod to where the franchise is headed.
Coffin voices the Minions themselves, and he is the lead actor here. That is worth naming. The Minions speak a made-up language, and Coffin has to make three distinct characters out of nonsense syllables. The voice work is the most disciplined part of the production.
Bullock was paid $10 million for her involvement. That is a real number and it is worth holding next to what the role asks of her. Scarlet Overkill is a sketch. She is a villain with a crown fixation and a husband, and the film never gives her a scene that explains why she wants what she wants. Bullock plays her straight, which is the right call, but there is not much on the page.
What the Box Office Says
Minions premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square in London on June 11, 2015. Universal Pictures released it in the United States on July 10. It runs 91 minutes. It is rated as family, animation, adventure and comedy. The tagline is “Go back to where it all began.”
The film grossed $1.16 billion. That made it the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2015, the second-highest-grossing animated film, and the tenth-highest-grossing film of all time. It launched a film series of two subsequent films.
Those numbers are the story of Minions, more than anything in the film itself. The movie is a prequel built on a side character. It was never going to be Despicable Me, and it did not need to be. It needed to be a hit, and it was one. The film received mixed reviews from critics. That is the honest description, and it matches what is on screen. Minions is not a disaster. It is not a success either.
Where the Film Runs Out of Road
The structure is the problem. The film has three acts and only one of them has momentum. The history montage is setup. The Villain-Con sequence and the Nelsons are the best material. The London heist and the crown plot are where the film should build, and instead it flattens. By the time Bob is on the throne, the movie has spent its best card.
There is also the question of who this is for. The Minions are a comic device. In Despicable Me they work because they interrupt a story about Gru and the girls. Here they are the story, and the story is that they want a boss. That is a motivation, not a plot. The film keeps handing them objectives — find a villain, get to Orlando, steal the crown — and none of them connect to anything the characters want.
The animation is clean. The 1960s setting gives the film a look that separates it from the rest of the franchise, and the costumes and cars are used well. The Minions themselves are well designed for comedy. They are small, they are yellow, they are hard to hurt, and they can be stacked and thrown and flattened. The film uses that.
The voice cast is overqualified in a way that helps. Keaton and Janney make the Nelsons feel like they wandered in from a better crime comedy. Hamm is doing something with Herb that the script does not support. Saunders plays the Queen with a straight face. Rush narrates like he means it.
None of this fixes the middle. The heist is not tense. The chase is not exciting. The crown plot resolves and then refuses to end. A 91-minute film should not feel like it is stalling, and this one does.
The Verdict on Minions
Minions is a prequel that answers a question the franchise never needed answered. The Minions are funny because they are a mob. Giving three of them names, a quest and a road trip turns a comic device into a protagonist, and the character cannot hold the weight. The best sequence — the Nelsons, the convention, the accidental monarchy — is genuinely good. The rest is a feature-length setup for a franchise that had already arrived.
The $1.16 billion gross says more about the Minions as a brand than about this film as a film. Audiences showed up for characters they already loved. What they got was a serviceable 91 minutes with one great joke and a lot of filler around it. That is not a failure. It is a missed opportunity, and the difference matters.
The Hard Numbers
- Title: Minions (2015)
- Directors: Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda
- Writer: Brian Lynch
- Runtime: 91 minutes
- Premiere: June 11, 2015, Odeon Leicester Square, London
- U.S. release: July 10, 2015, Universal Pictures
- Gross: $1.16 billion
- Sandra Bullock fee: $10 million
- Metacritic: 56/100
- Our score: 5.6 of 10
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