A prequel for the pipsqueaks called ‘Minions’

The summer of 2014 was a slow time for the movie industry because there was less number of animated films as compared to 2013. Yet even those personalities start to blend, and their individual strengths make no difference to the narrative. They’re still the funniest cartoon characters in town, hitting that silly sweet spot capable of delighting everyone from toddlers to Kim Jong-un, bound to reach new worldwide box office heights for Universal’s Illumination Entertainment.

The soundtrack, filled with songs of the 1960s, includes several Beatles works and those of The Rolling Stones, The Turtles, The Doors and Donovan’s – Mellow Yellow, which mesh well with the narrative. Well, let’s just say Minions are everywhere. Parents be warned. Your kids are about to walk and talk like minions for a week after this watch! As time goes on, the MINIONS serve only the most despicable of masters including the likes of a T-Rex and Napoleon.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the trailer (and really, the rest of the movie is just padding), “Minions” is about an ancient tribe of yellow freaks of nature whose only goal is to serve the biggest, baddest villain around. After years of hiding away in a cave and becoming increasingly more and more disheartened, one bright Minion, Kevin, decides to head out on an expedition to find a new boss.

The prequel, and third film in the Despicable franchise, hinges on Kevin, Bob and Stuart’s desperate need to find a despot to be devoted to.

The whole series is based on villains and crimes, but nowhere in the other films has there been a noose in plain sight; it’s a little much. The oversized stars of “Jurassic World” get their points across without any intelligible words at all.

The film really shouldn’t work.

The Minions came into the forefront with the Despicable Me movies where they helped the anti-hero Gru carry out his bad tasks. It was the flawless seasoning in an entertaining movie. Even Tic-tac has launched Minion shaped box for their new range of Tic-tac’s to promote the film. There isn’t any lines or antics that your kids will run off with and embarrass you at the grocery store later on. It’s fairly straightforward, with not that much substance.

Eventually, the tale settles in 1968, when a minion search team (Bob, Stuart, Kevin) hitches a ride from a bank robbing family (led by Michael Keaton and Alison Janney) to the big villainy convention in Orlando.

If it comes in at the high end of estimates, Minions will have the second, or third, best opening for an animated film. Here, the 3D made the animation look crisper and more realistic. It’s fun to hear bits of Spanish, French, Italian and English pop up in minion-speak, so you can nearly make sense of it. I liked the dual homage to Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute”, with one minion humming an aria by birdcatcher Papageno and another embracing a fire hydrant and yelling “Papagena!”