{"id":53899,"date":"2022-07-04T17:00:37","date_gmt":"2022-07-04T21:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=53899"},"modified":"2022-07-04T17:01:27","modified_gmt":"2022-07-04T21:01:27","slug":"minions-the-rise-of-gru-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2022\/07\/minions-the-rise-of-gru-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Minions: The Rise of Gru \u2013 Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I believe the opening of \u201cMinions: The Rise of Gru\u201d represents an important milestone. If I\u2019m correct, this is the last movie whose trailer I saw prior to the pandemic. I\u2019ve made a ton of jokes about how many times I had to sit through the trailers for \u201cMorbius\u201d and \u201cTop Gun: Maverick\u201d before those movies opened, but unless I\u2019m mistaken, this was the last holdout. Was the two-year-plus wait worth it? Not really. It\u2019s not the disaster\/punchline that \u201cMorbius\u201d was, but it isn\u2019t up to the level of a crowd-pleasing smash like \u201cTop Gun: Maverick,\u201d either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

            The new film takes place long before the \u201cDespicable Me\u201d movies, but after 2015\u2019s \u201cMinions.\u201d 11-year-old Gru (Steve Carell, whose vaguely-Eastern-European accent is even more annoying when he adds childlike affectations) dreams of one day becoming a supervillain. Luckily there\u2019s a spot open on the legendary squad known as the Vicious 6 since they kicked out founding member Wild Knuckles (Alan Arkin) right after he procured them a powerful relic. The Vicious 6, now led by Belle Bottom (Taraji P. Henson), dismiss Gru for being too young, and he retaliates by stealing the relic for himself. He\u2019s soon abducted by Wild Knuckles, who is planning his comeback. Gru is simultaneously terrified and in awe of his favorite villain. Maybe as a side-project to the kidnapping, W.K. can mentor him on becoming a supervillain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Of course, we can\u2019t forget about the Minions\u2019 role in all of this. Gru keeps a hoard of the happy henchman (all voiced by Pierre Coffin) in his mother\u2019s basement. Unbeknownst to any of the villains, Gru gave the relic to a bumbler named Otto, who traded it for a Pet Rock. An irate Gru fires the entire Minion army as a result, but they\u2019re loyal to a fault, and immediately organize a rescue effort when they learn their master has been abducted. Standouts Kevin, Stewart, and Bob track Gru to Wild Knuckles\u2019 hideout in San Francisco, where they become kung fu masters at the hands of Master Chow (Michelle Yeoh, my favorite cast member in this movie, even though her appeal is based on her work on \u201cEverything Everywhere All at Once\u201d from earlier this year). Otto works on retrieving the relic via tricycle, while the Vicious 6 track Gru and Wild Knuckles. Like a certain Jack Nicholson movie that is curiously never mentioned, the whole thing is destined to end in San Francisco\u2019s Chinatown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The humor is exactly what you\u2019d expect from a movie like this. The Minions live for physical comedy almost as much as they live to serve evildoers (an inexplicable morality, since they themselves don\u2019t have an evil bone in their bodies). When the movie isn\u2019t mining laughs from Minion mayhem, it mines laughs from the way they talk, which I think is mostly gibberish, though I definitely caught a few Spanish phrases in there. Whatever language it is, it\u2019s high-pitched for maximum annoyance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The target audience for \u201cMinions: The Rise of Gru\u201d is obviously kids, or more specifically families with kids looking for a group activity over the holiday weekend. This means that older kids and adults will be \u201cdragged\u201d to see this movie. There\u2019s some stuff to like, usually involving Wild Knuckles or the Vicious 6 (my favorite member is sinister sister Nun-Chuck, by the way). But at least for me, there wasn\u2019t enough of it. I\u2019m sorry, but a little of Gru and the Minions goes a long way, and I can\u2019t endorse a movie whose very title contains multiple characters and not one of them doesn\u2019t grate on me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: C<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMinions: The Rise of Gru\u201d is rated PG for some action\/violence and rude humor. Its running time is 87 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             I believe the opening of \u201cMinions: The Rise of Gru\u201d represents an important milestone. If I\u2019m correct, this is the last movie whose trailer I saw… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":53900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[1411],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53899"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53901,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53899\/revisions\/53901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}