Untapped potential

If any of our loyal GulfWeekly readers have children under the age of 12, then it’s almost a certainty that you’ll know precisely what a ‘Minion’ is.

They’re the small, pill-shaped yellow creatures that adorn bedroom walls, bedspreads, school bags and any other apparel a youngster can get his or her hands on. No doubt some of you have to swim through a hoard of the cuddly toys every time you step into a bedroom.

Yep, they’re pretty ubiquitous. Originally the sidekicks of the protagonist in Despicable Me and its sequel, the Minions were less breakout stars and more sledgehammer-through-a-brick-wall explosions that has seen unprecedented levels of merchandise sold and profits stretching into billions.

As inevitably as night following day, it didn’t take long for studio bosses to grant them their own movie. Unfortunately, the creators seem reluctant to pull the trigger on them completely and introduce too many human elements when all we want to see are these cute and hilarious eccentrics do their thing. As such, the film is very uneven with some very high peaks, but some admittedly low troughs.

Minions is an origin story and thus a prequel to Despicable Me. Events start at the dawn of time, when the Minions developed from tiny, single-celled organisms into the diminutive, banana-loving, nonsense-spouting henchmen we all know and love.

Along the way, evolution has granted them one distinct trait: to find and serve the most despicable and villainous master they can find.

In an opening montage wonderfully narrated by Geoffrey Rush, we witness our chums evolve through the ages, serving a variety of masters such as the T-Rex, a caveman, a pharaoh, Dracula and Napoleon.

But there’s a running theme: finding a boss to serve is simple, but keeping said master is difficult. The Minions, through a series of truly hilarious visual gags, keep killing the baddies off in unfortunate circumstances.

They scuttle off to Antarctica to live a master-free existence in isolation, but without a direction, they become depressed in their aimlessness. Eventually - and this is what takes up the bulk of the film - Kevin comes up with a plan to sail for new lands with best friends Stuart and Bob to find the most villainous master that has ever lived.

This opening section is easily one of the funniest and best-directed animation sequences I’ve ever seen. The visual gags are simply brilliant and you have to marvel at the creative minds behind the piece. It drew as many laughs from the screening I was in as Up’s opening montage drew tears a few years back.

The film takes a sharp downturn after this, with the film-makers seeming to lack confidence that the loveable oddballs could carry a film on their own. Therefore, the rest of the film is spent globetrotting (in boringly familiar places like London and New York) with too much emphasis on human characters who just aren’t as funny or endearing.

For example, villainess Scarlett Overkill (who the Minions meet at the wonderfully-imagined VillainCon) has very little personality and is a bit of a dud, so it’s frustrating that her schemes become the focus of the movie. The rest aren’t much of an improvement and the voice actors don’t sound nearly as enthusiastic as the Minions’, which ultimately shows.

The animation is crisp and lush, so there’s no fault there as you’d expect, and there’s some decent set pieces, but a lot of it feels like going through the motions. Things get more expansive towards the end, but the spectacle feels bloated when all we want to see is things scaled back and the Minions doing their thing.

Thankfully, when the Minions do steal some screen time back, the jokes come thick and fast. There’s slapstick and silliness for the younger crowd, but also some very mature and intelligent jokes for the adults to laugh along with too.

Ultimately, Minions could have been a massive success if it had done what it said on the tin and actually been about, well … Minions. It’s no coincidence that the opening segment which solely features them (worth seeing again and again) is by far the best part of the film, and the funniest jokes come in the few occasions when they grab the camera back from the humans.

It’s disappointing to see it run out of steam by focussing on boring humans, who have almost every other movie on the planet to star in and already have two within this very franchise.

Tickets for this movie will sell like hot cakes at the box office, so I’m sure another one will be here eventually. Hopefully, the creators will have the courage to follow through with their convictions next time, and create a true masterpiece.

* Showing in Cineco, Seef ll, Al Jazira and Dana Cineplex