Wow. Who... who are you, my... knights in... shining denim?

Minions

(2015)

It doesn’t take a genius to see why the Minions are such a phenomenon, surpassing the Despicable Me franchise that spawned them (or rather, they’re now enshrined as the underpinning for its massive success). That doesn’t make Minions a great movie, though. It’s as agreeably slipshod and pasted together as you’d expect from an attempt to beat supporting characters into the position of leads, but it nevertheless represents something of a pinnacle as a spin-off and prequel that’s successful in its own right. Usually they stink.

Penguins of Madagascar dealt with the prequel bit in its opening scene, which was also the best scene in a rather sorry affair that, like Minions, struggled to find a tale worth telling. Minions is more transparent in its deficiencies there. It doesn’t even bother trying to explain why such cute, imitable and well-meaning ba-nana-loving fellows are obsessed with serving evil masterminds. They just are. So we get the lowdown on what they did before joining Gru, at its best during a highly inventive (yes) prologue in which they join, and unwittingly undermine, various bosses throughout history, leading to the extinction of the dinosaurs, the demise of ancient Egypt, a brief spell with Count Dracula and an alliance with the always-good-for-a-height-gag Napoleon.

And fetching up in the ‘60s is a massively advantageous decision, since it means the rest of the plot can be strung together with pop hits from the era (with additional help from Geoffrey Rush’s engaging narrator). Not since the early days of DreamWorks Animation has a cartoon feature so shrewdly employed pop songs. Did you ever expect to hear The Doors in a kids’ movie? Should they have? I have no idea. This is a feature featuring a humorous interlude in which a giant Kevin appears to take a whizz.

Kevin, Stuart and Bob find themselves a new despicable boss in the form of Sandra Bullock’s Scarlet Overkill, before embarking for Swinging London. She’s a reasonable but unremarkable villain, much as the ‘60s England setting starts off well (police drinking tea during a high-speed pursuit) but descends into rather desperate spitballing that finds Bob crowned king and Kevin inflated to the aforementioned enormous size. You’re never far from something engaging, though, be it Bob’s friendship with a rat, Scarlet Overkill reading The Three Little Pigs to the three little Minions, the hypno-hat (great use of Hair, with guards reduced to their underwear) or irreverent asides (“Do you think its funny, to mock the elderly?” asks the Keeper of the Crown; “Yeah” comes the reply).

I guess returning Despicable Me (co-)director Pierre Coffin could hardly have passed on duties seeing as how he also voices the trio of Minions. It’s a terrifically inventive, catchy performance(s), but has limited scope for variation, which definitely means the entire movie consists of casting around for things to do. It’s only a surprise Minions is as sustained as it is, that it even got far enough to run out of interesting things to do in the last third. As such, it seems churlish to complain that it might have been better, since I’m not sure it could have been. It exists purely for the cash/merchandising wee ones will get their parents to put down, which means there’s sure be a Minions 2 after Despicable Me 3. A billon dollars worldwide guarantees it.

Comments

They'll think I've lost control again and put it all down to evolution.

Time Bandits (1981) (SPOILERS) Terry Gilliam had co-directed previously, and his solo debut had visual flourish on its side, but it was with Time Bandits that Gilliam the auteur was born. The first part of his Trilogy of Imagination, it remains a dazzling work – as well as being one of his most successful – rich in theme and overflowing with ideas while resolutely aimed at a wide (family, if you like) audience. Indeed, most impressive about Time Bandits is that there’s no evidence of self-censoring here, of attempting to make it fit a certain formula, format or palatable template.

I never strangled a chicken in my life!

Rope (1948) (SPOILERS) Rope doesn’t initially appear to have been one of the most venerated of Hitchcocks, but it has gone through something of a rehabilitation over the years, certainly since it came back into circulation during the 80s. I’ve always rated it highly; yes, the seams of it being, essentially, a formal experiment on the director’s part, are evident, but it’s also an expert piece of writing that uses our immediate knowledge of the crime to create tension throughout; what we/the killers know is juxtaposed with the polite dinner party they’ve thrown in order to wallow in their superiority.

Oh, you got me right in the pantaloons, partner.

The Party (1968) (SPOILERS) Blake Edwards’ semi-improvisational reunion with Peter Sellers is now probably best known for – I was going to use an elephant-in-the-room gag, but at least one person already went there – Sellers’ “brown face”. And it isn’t a decision one can really defend, even by citing The Party ’s influence on Bollywood. Satyajit Ray had also reportedly been considering working with Sellers… and then he saw the film. One can only assume he’d missed similar performances in The Millionairess and The Road to Hong Kong ; in the latter case, entirely understandable, if not advisable. Nevertheless, for all the flagrant stereotyping, Sellers’ bungling Hrundi V Bakshi is a very likeable character, and indeed, it’s the piece’s good-natured, soft centre – his fledgling romance with Claudine Longet’s Michele – that sees The Party through in spite of its patchy, hit-and-miss quality.

I'm an old ruin, but she certainly brings my pulse up a beat or two.

The Paradine Case (1947) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock wasn’t very positive about The Paradine Case , his second collaboration with Gregory Peck, but I think he’s a little harsh on a picture that, if it doesn’t quite come together dramatically, nevertheless maintains interest on the basis of its skewed take on the courtroom drama. Peck’s defence counsel falls for his client, Alida Valli’s accused (of murder), while wife Ann Todd wilts dependably and masochistically on the side-lines.

You must have hopes, wishes, dreams.

Brazil (1985) (SPOILERS) Terry Gilliam didn’t consider Brazil the embodiment of a totalitarian nightmare it is often labelled as. His 1984½ (one of the film’s Fellini-riffing working titles) was “ the Nineteen Eighty-Four for 1984 ”, in contrast to Michael Anderson’s Nineteen Eighty-Four from 1948. This despite Gilliam famously boasting never to have read the Orwell’s novel: “ The thing that intrigues me about certain books is that you know them even though you’ve never read them. I guess the images are archetypal ”. Or as Pauline Kael observed, Brazil is to Nineteen Eighty-Four as “ if you’d just heard about it over the years and it had seeped into your visual imagination ”. Gilliam’s suffocating system isn’t unflinchingly cruel and malevolently intolerant of individuality; it is, in his vision of a nightmare “future”, one of evils spawned by the mechanisms of an out-of-control behemoth: a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. And yet, that is not really, despite how indulgently and glee

A herbal enema should fix you up.

Never Say Never Again (1983) (SPOILERS) There are plenty of sub-par Bond s in the official (Eon) franchise, several of them even weaker than this opportunistic remake of Thunderball , but they do still feel like Bond movies. Never Say Never Again , despite – or possibly because he’s part of it – featuring the much-vaunted, title-referencing return of the Sean Connery to the lead role, only ever feels like a cheap imitation. And yet, reputedly, it cost more than the same year’s Rog outing Octopussy .

Miss Livingstone, I presume.

Stage Fright (1950) (SPOILERS) This one has traditionally taken a bit of a bruising, for committing a cardinal crime – lying to the audience. More specifically, lying via a flashback, through which it is implicitly assumed the truth is always relayed. As Richard Schickel commented, though, the egregiousness of the action depends largely on whether you see it as a flaw or a brilliant act of daring: an innovation. I don’t think it’s quite that – not in Stage Fright ’s case anyway; the plot is too ordinary – but I do think it’s a picture that rewards revisiting knowing the twist, since there’s much else to enjoy it for besides.

Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know, if you ripped the fronts off houses, you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) (SPOILERS) I’m not sure you could really classify Shadow of a Doubt as underrated, as some have. Not when it’s widely reported as Hitchcock’s favourite of his films. Underseen might be a more apt sobriquet, since it rarely trips off the lips in the manner of his best-known pictures. Regardless of the best way to categorise it, it’s very easy to see why the director should have been so quick to recognise Shadow of a Doubt 's qualities, even if some of those qualities are somewhat atypical.

She was addicted to Tums for a while.

Marriage Story (2019) (SPOILERS) I don’t tend to fall heavily for Noah Baumbach fare. He’s undoubtedly a distinctive voice – even if his collaborations with Wes Anderson are the least of that director’s efforts – but his devotion to an exclusive, rarefied New York bubble becomes ever more off-putting with each new project. And ever more identifiable as being a lesser chronicler of the city’s privileged quirks than his now disinherited forbear Woody Allen, who at his peak mastered a balancing act between the insightful, hilarious and self-effacing. Marriage Story finds Baumbach going yet again where Woody went before, this time brushing up against the director’s Ingmar Bergman fixation.

You can’t climb a ladder, no. But you can skip like a goat into a bar.

Juno and the Paycock (1930) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s second sound feature. Such was the lustre of this technological advance that a wordy play was picked. By Sean O’Casey, upon whom Hitchcock based the prophet of doom at the end of The Birds . Juno and the Paycock , set in 1922 during the Irish Civil War, begins as a broad comedy of domestic manners, but by the end has descended into full-blown Greek (or Catholic) tragedy. As such, it’s an uneven but still watchable affair, even if Hitch does nothing to disguise its stage origins.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog