Minions: The Rise of Gru – Film Review

In the 1970s, young Gru tries to join a group of supervillains called the Vicious 6 after they oust their leader — the legendary fighter Wild Knuckles. When the interview turns disastrous, Gru and his Minions go on the run with the Vicious 6 hot on their tails. Luckily, he finds an unlikely source for guidance — Wild Knuckles himself — and soon discovers that even bad guys need a little help from their friends.

Ah, yes. The Minions – the favorite movie character of every single grandma in the world who loves to share memes on Facebook with their adorable yellow faces plastered on it for… some reason. The Minions are some of the most beloved film characters of all time, ever since making their appearance in Despicable Me.

That film was not centered around the Minions, but rather their leader Gru. However, many young children fell in love with the Minions, who eventually become popular with so much merchandise to the point of insanity. Seriously, how many Minions merch items are there in the world? It seems infinite.

Every time a movie comes out with these strange yet sometimes adorable characters in it, the movie in question does unbelievably well at the box office. They even got their own spinoff film in 2015, which ended up making a whopping total of $1.159 billion against a budget of $74 million.

So, of course, a sequel was inevitable, and alas here we are with Minions: The Rise of Gru. Look – I am not the target audience of this movie. I am twenty-two years old, and this movie is basically made for toddlers, so I cannot sit here and say that The Rise of Gru “wasn’t for me,” because of course it wasn’t.

What I can say, however, is whether or not I think it will entertain the youngsters out there, and the answer is… sometimes. There are some legitimately funny moments in this film that took me by surprise, seeing as how I almost thoroughly hated the first film. There is still some ridiculously stupid humor injected in the film that will only make babies laugh, but for the most part, children will likely find this film to be funny.

By far my favorite part of this entire movie is Steve Carrell returning as the voice of Gru. He always brings so much charisma and energy to the role, and you can tell that he has such a blast with the character. But if I’m being completely honest, this whole formula of the franchise is getting so stale.

The same things happen in this film that you’d expect, and really, it’s almost as if you’re watching a short little movie that expands upon the first Minions movie. There is some new material here, of course, but there is also so much content that feels disappointingly recycled.

Kids will probably be quite interested to see exactly how Gru came to be the big villain that we all know him to be, as well. Like I said earlier – there is some legitimately good stuff in this film that the adults won’t mind too much, but I also don’t think kids will fall in love with this movie.

If you take your child to see Minions: The Rise of Gru, they will likely have a good time, but you’re still better off showing them something with more substance and heart.