KING BOB!!!

Did Scuttle from “The Little Mermaid” get his own movie, too?  If not, why not?  Discuss

It's that time again!  Jeremy went to a movie, so he feels obligated to tell you everything that was wrong with it.  

You make it seem so predictable.  One of these days, I may actually watch a good movie.  

You won't tell us about that.  You like to rant.  

I suppose that's true.   

So, in today's installment of Jeremy Is In The Theatre, I took the opportunity to see "Minions," the new movie featuring the adorable Twinkie-looking characters from the Despicable Me franchise.  To be honest and up-front about this, I was against the very concept of this movie ever existing in the first place, so my expectations were very low entering the theatre.  I wasn't disappointed, but really, that's not saying much. 

Secondary characters are secondary for a reason.  It's not because they're not great characters, and it's not because they don't have their own story.  It's that they are best seen in small doses, which makes it that much more special when they are around.  Some wonderful examples from far better films might be Brooks from "The Shawshank Redemption," Scuttle from "The Little Mermaid," M-O from "WALL-E," Joe Pesci's character in either "Goodfellas," or "Casino," or Chewbacca from "Star Wars."  They're all wonderful characters who add so much to the films they're in.  Some might even consider them to be the best part of their respective movies, but they're not the leads.  They can't be the leads.  Sometimes, they're turned into the leads.  

I don't know when this trend started happening, but amazing secondary characters from successful film franchises have started getting their own films.  With often disastrous results.  X-Men spun off Hugh Jackman into the "Origins: Wolverine" atrocity.  The Madagascar Penguins got their own movie that didn't live up to Madagascar.  Kevin Smith broke off Jay and Silent Bob for their own pile of flotsam, and now Gru's Minions from Despicable Me get a prequel. 

I love the Minions.  They're absolutely hilarious in their high-energy slapstick role which is great for a cartoon short or for the little asides they have in Despicable Me.  They also have a rare ability to seamlessly blend insane antics with great emotional depth, as evidenced by the department-store scene in the original Despicable Me where they're supposed to be buying a new unicorn.  You knew full well while watching that movie that whenever there were Minions on the screen, something amazing was about to happen.  And they delivered every time.  Can all of that carry over into a full 90-minutes?  

It can not.  

The main plot of Minions involves three of them on a grand adventure to work for a sinister villain.  The rest of the minions have their own little asides, much like in Despicable Me, but without any other real characters to drive a narrative (think: Dr. Nefario or the orphans).  They're just asides for the sake of asides.  Then you go back to more Minions doing much the same thing, but somewhere else.  There's just not the same breadth in storytelling, character development, or quite frankly, any real sense of conflict.  Yes, there's an evil villain with a master plot, but the master plot wouldn't actually accomplish anything if it worked, and the whole plan revolved around "Get the Minions to do this for me," so it wasn't much of a plot anyway. 

Sure, there are plenty of genuinely funny slapstick moments, some fun catching little bits of english that are scattered in the Minion-speak, and overall, it's an entirely harmless 90 minutes of fun.  It was just entirely unnecessary and not up to the absurdly high standard set by it's original franchise.  Overall, I give this film a rating of, "Ehh...it could have been a lot worse...I guess."  

This has been another edition of Jeremy Is In The Theatre.