Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022)

Elevator Pitch: Eleven year old Gru is applying for a post with the world famous criminal gang the Vicious 6, who are down to five after the apparent death of their leader Wild Knuckles. But they ridicule him due to his youth. However, he manages to steal the magic Zodiac stone with the assistance of Bob, Stuart and Kevin, his minions. The stone is given to Minion Otto for safe keeping, but he trades it for a pet rock  and it ends up round the neck of a motor biker who goes to San Fransisco with it. Gru is captured by Knuckles who is not dead after all  and requires the minions to give up the stone or else Gru will be killed. Bob, Stuart and Kevin therefore have to somehow get to San Fransisco, recover the stone and confront Wild Knuckles, all the while evading the pursuing five of the Vicious 6.

Content: No sex or nudity, although some of the minions have theiir pants pulled down a couple of times. This caused a lot of laughs amongst the young people in the screen with us, also a couple of scenes featuring lavatories and one or two farts which they found equally entertaining.  The Vicious 6 headquarters is under a store called “Criminal Records”. Belle Bottom the female leader harangues everybody – it is either 1975 or 1961 at the time hence the clothing. The minions are taught Kung-Fu by a retired Chinese assassin. Wild Knuckles drives about in a very stylish van. The Zoldiac Stone turns the Vicious 6 into wonderful Chinese dragons etc. There is a catchy sound track finishing up with the minions doing the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. 

A View: The critics have had various views about this outing but the money says it all, on an estimated $80 million, the box office has achieved about $400, million up to today. If anything weaknesses in the plot were covered by enthusiastic chases and there were some good jokes. Looking back at my reviews of the previous Minion films it appears that I liked “Despicable Me 2” the best, but this outing comes a close second.

I quite like most children’s films and here are a few I would recommend from those reviewed on this site:  Toy Story 2, Wall-E and The Boxtrolls.