Minions: The Rise of Gru sets out to explain how a small boy in overalls became the most famous supervillain in animation, and it does that job with a straight face and a 1976 setting. Directed by Kyle Balda and written by Matthew Fogel from a story by Fogel and Brian Lynch, the film is the second Minions prequel and the fifth entry in the Despicable Me franchise. It runs 87 minutes, carries the tagline “A villain will rise,” and earned $940 million worldwide, finishing as the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2022. It is also, by the numbers, a middling movie. Metacritic sits at 56 out of 100.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures UK.
An eleven-year-old Gru and the Vicious 6
The premise is thin but clean. Gru is eleven, living in 1976, and dreams of becoming a supervillain. The Minions work for him. When the Vicious 6 — a supervillain team now led by Belle Bottom — send out an audition invitation, Gru sees his way in. The team is looking to replace its founder, Wild Knuckles, after they betrayed him and tried to kill him during a heist for the Zodiac Stone, a rock tied to the Chinese zodiac.
Gru’s interview goes badly. He steals the stone anyway and escapes with Kevin, Stuart and Bob, then hands it to another Minion, Otto, for safekeeping. Otto trades it for a pet rock. That single bad decision drives the rest of the film, and it is the kind of low-stakes screwup the series has always run on.
Steve Carell, Pierre Coffin and a final role for Alan Arkin
Steve Carell returns as Gru. Pierre Coffin returns as the Minions. Julie Andrews is back as Gru’s Mom, and Russell Brand is back as Dr. Nefario. The new additions are the interesting part: Taraji P. Henson as Belle Bottom, Michelle Yeoh as Master Chow, and Alan Arkin as Wild Knuckles, in what the film’s own record marks as his final role.
The voice cast also includes Jean-Claude Van Damme as Jean Clawed, Dolph Lundgren as Svengeance, Danny Trejo as Stronghold, Lucy Lawless as Nun-Chuck and Jimmy O. Yang as Henchman 1. That is a lot of names for a movie that gives most of them one scene and a punchline.
Knuckles takes Gru to San Francisco
After the stone goes missing, Knuckles kidnaps Gru and takes him to San Francisco. He tells the Minions that if they do not hand over the stone within 48 hours, Gru will be killed. Kevin, Stuart and Bob fail to find it, so they head for San Francisco to rescue him. Otto goes after a biker he realizes is wearing the stone as a necklace.
At Knuckles’ house, the Minions are chased by his goons until Master Chow — a former kung fu teacher now working at an acupuncture clinic — steps in and beats them. The Minions learn kung fu, their training ends early, and they go to rescue Gru. Otto catches the biker at Death Valley, makes a friend of him, gets the stone back, and gets a ride to San Francisco.
A crocodile pool and the Bank of Evil
The back half belongs to Gru and Knuckles. Knuckles’ goons quit on him, and Gru starts to bond with the old villain. He later saves him from being eaten by crocodiles in his pool. To teach Gru how to be a villain, Knuckles takes him to rob the Bank of Evil. It is the film’s best idea: a kid and a washed-up founder committing a crime together because neither has anyone else.
That relationship is the only thing in Minions: The Rise of Gru that carries any weight. Everything else is a delivery system for it.
What the $940 million and the 56 actually mean
Here is the box of hard numbers this film lives on.
- Runtime: 87 minutes
- Release date: July 1, 2022 (United States)
- World premiere: June 13, 2022, Annecy International Animation Film Festival
- Worldwide gross: $940 million
- 2022 rank: fifth-highest-grossing film of the year
- Metacritic: 56/100
The gap between the gross and the score is the whole story. A movie can be the fifth-biggest of its year and still be a 56. Minions: The Rise of Gru did not win its audience with craft. It won it with a brand, a release date, and a two-year delay that turned a sequel into an event.
The two-year delay and what it bought
The film was delayed for two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It premiered at Annecy on June 13, 2022, and opened in the United States on July 1 through Universal. Reviews were mostly positive, with praise for the score, the animation, the humor, the voice performances — Carell’s especially — and the aesthetic. Some critics knocked the plot.
That split is honest. The craft is real. The animation is clean, the 1976 look is committed, and Carell does something genuinely funny with a kid who has not yet learned to be scary. The plot is the weak part, and it is weak in a specific way: it keeps stopping.
Where the film actually ranks
Ranking the problems, worst first:
- The plot stalls every time the stone changes hands, and it changes hands constantly.
- The Vicious 6 are introduced as a threat and then mostly stand around.
- Master Chow’s kung fu detour is a set piece that does not connect to Gru.
- The Minions’ training ends early, which means the film skips the payoff it set up.
- The 1976 setting is decoration more than story.
None of these are fatal. All of them together are why 56 is the right number.
Why the Minions still work and the movie still doesn’t
The Minions are not the problem. They never were. Pierre Coffin’s vocal work is the engine of the franchise, and the film knows it, which is why Kevin, Stuart and Bob get a full rescue mission and Otto gets a road trip. The problem is that the film has four plots and 87 minutes, and it treats each one as if it has time to breathe.
The Vicious 6 are the clearest waste. Belle Bottom, Jean Clawed, Svengeance, Stronghold and Nun-Chuck are played by Henson, Van Damme, Lundgren, Trejo and Lawless — a cast built for a movie that lets them do something. Minions: The Rise of Gru does not. They betray Knuckles, they lose the stone, they recede. Henson gets the most room and still not enough.
Alan Arkin is the exception. Wild Knuckles is the only character in the film with an arc, and Arkin plays him as a man who has already lost and is deciding what to do with the time left. His final film role is a small one, and it is the best thing in the movie. The crocodile rescue lands because Arkin makes you believe Knuckles did not expect anyone to come back for him.
That is the review in one scene. A franchise built on gibberish and slapstick accidentally made a movie about an old villain and a young one, and then buried it under a Zodiac Stone chase.
The verdict on Minions: The Rise of Gru
Minions: The Rise of Gru is a 5.6. It is not a bad film. It is a film that does not know which of its four stories it wants to tell, and so it tells all of them at half strength. The animation is good, the score is good, Carell is good, Arkin is better than good, and the plot is a mess of handoffs that never build.
The $940 million is not evidence the movie works. It is evidence the franchise works. Those are different things, and this film is the clearest proof the series has offered that it can coast on goodwill and still clear the fifth-highest gross of the year. The delay helped the box office. It did not help the script.
What matters here is not the stone, the Vicious 6, or the 1976 needle drops. What matters is that the only time Minions: The Rise of Gru feels like it has something to say is when an old man and a boy rob a bank together. Everything else is noise, and there is a lot of it.
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