Years ago at the dawn of my career, someone advised me that there is no reason to write a negative book review.  If that advice holds for movies, I should stop here.

Minions is not a good movie.  For those who read my posts regularly, you'll know that I have a low bar for family films; I can find the good in almost any children's movie.  Not this one.  As my FB friends read today, my status was "Wednesday we got Paul Blart:  Mall Cop 2 from Redbox and thought it was the worst movie ever, until we saw Minions."  

OK, what is good about the movie?  The new characters.  We all know the Despicable Me minions, though I wasn't quite sure about their names.  The three main minions here are Bob, Stuart and Kevin.  But the new characters are great:  Scarlet Overkill (Sondra Bullock) and her husband, Herb (Jon Hamm).  How can you go wrong there?  Also, our minions hitch a ride with a bad-guy family, the Nelsons, voiced by Michael Keaton and Allison Janney.  OK, surely those four are a good "soup starter" for an excellent film, right?  No.  The producers seemed to spend all their money on voice talent and a good soundtrack (Beatles, the musical Hair, Mellow Yellow, etc.) and forgot to buy a script.

The movie starts out fine as an original story of how the minions came to be and how they got to modern times with Gru.  All of their evil bosses die, starting with T-Rex, and so they are continually looking for new villains.  (I didn't know that the minions were immortal, a fact that would seem important to keep consistent.)  In 1968, our brave trio leaves the minions in the cave where they are hiding out, in search of a new boss.  Their travels take them to 1968 New York City, where there are great visual gags, if you were alive and remember 1968.  Judging from the lack of laughs in our theater, I would say the number was 1.  Still, the movie seems ok.  The minions stumble upon an ad for "Villain-Con," and hitchhike there with the Nelsons.  A joke is set up about how wonderful Orlando is, but it is a pre-Disney swamp.  Again, lost on everyone in the audience.  The scenes with Villain-Con are great, and could have taken up more of the movie.  The minions win the temporary favor of the greatest villain of the time, Scarlet Overkill, and go home with her.  Again, the scenes with Scarlet in her house were great and could have taken up more of the movie.  Instead, the movie got so stupid it's hard to write about here.

Scarlet sends the three out on a quest for Queen Elizabeth II's crown.  If they fail, they will be "blown off the face of the earth."  (Again, if they have lived for tens of thousands of years, this is hard to get interested in.)  From here, things could have gone a right way or a wrong way, and the writers chose the superwrong way.  Let's just say that there's a moment where one of the minions (Stuart, maybe) hypnotizes the Tower of London guards into taking off their clothes and dancing to a minion version of the title song in Hair, the musical.  No one else in the theater knew what song that was or why they were taking their clothes off.  I guarantee you no seven year-old did.

I hate to say it, but the minions are the most boring part of the movie.  They are great for comic relief, but like the Ice Age squirrel or the Madagascar penguins, they don't need a whole movie.  If the movie had centered more on Scarlet or the Nelsons, with the minions alongside, then it would have been better.   And, funny bits that children could understand that don't assume a knowledge of the summer of 1968 would have been better.  My seven year-old, after the movie was over said, "We are never seeing that again."  This from the guy who wanted to keep Paul Blart:  Mall Cop 2 an extra day.

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