Pierre Coffin e Kyle Balda
Minions

I love animation, just to be clear. I don't think it's just for kids, as Pixar has shown us over the last 20 years.

Recently Inside Out came out, which I loved, and I would rank it among the best animation films of all time, and I’m not kidding. The beauty of that film is that it's not just for kids; everyone can watch it. The little ones, perhaps, will not immediately understand the message the film wants to convey, it's still complex for them to understand the emotions of pre-adolescence.

However, entertainment, if done well, can be enjoyable for a wider audience (e.g., Madagascar, Megamind, etc...), not always does entertainment rhyme with crap.

This time, however, it does rhyme indeed.

Let’s go back 5 years, when Despicable Me was released in theaters. That same year Toy Story 3, How to Train Your Dragon, and Megamind were released, and with Despicable Me​ have something in common, the evil protagonist.

While Megamind was entertainment with excellent fully realized ideas, I found Despicable Me very raw in terms of graphics (it looks plastic) and undeveloped characters except for the minions (what a surprise!), yet it managed to defend itself from being a total flop thanks to good gags and jokes.

In 2013 the sequel came out, and I must say I appreciated it a lot. The plot is now much better developed as are the protagonists. An excellent product.

The director Coffin, however, has a twisted and contorted idea: a spin-off about the minions lasting an hour and a half!!!

The minions can be as cute and funny as you like, but listening to them for an hour and a half in a row of UAHUAUAUAUAUA, it’s not great. I’ve felt the shiver of this crap on my skin, and I was forced to watch this movie, they pushed me into the theater with bulldozers, I couldn’t say no.

The movie starts like an episode of Ulisse because the narrator’s voice is --believe it or not-- Alberto Angela... And already we're off to a bad start.

The original voice actor is Geoffrey Rush, a great English actor. Angela's voice is terrible in a similar context; it seems like a parody of Ulisse; it doesn't fit.

Then we see the minions going through more or less all the good parts that were in the trailer in 5 minutes. Yes, all the good parts are concentrated in the first 20 minutes.

The rest is set in New York and London in '68, and perhaps there is something good about this movie: the 60s soundtrack, really cool. From the Doors to the WHO, to the Beatles. In short, for those who understand, the background will be enjoyable.

Unfortunately, all the gags and humor of the two "Despicable" films are totally lost here: I laughed yes and no at a minimum of 3-4 times; they are nursery gags. The room, in fact, was CRAMMED with preschoolers, and I have to confess, I felt a bit silly in there.

Then there's other lousy dubbing like it’s raining: Fazio, Litizzetto, Selvaggia Lucarelli (???), but are you kidding me? How the hell do you do it? Same problem as many other films, like Shark Tale, already a crappy movie by itself and badly dubbed: Laurenti, i pali e dispari, Tiziano Ferro, and the Parodi (who?), in short, people who know a TON about dubbing (Gru in Despicable Me is dubbed by Max Giusti, few will get it... maybe...)

The only decent thing is the plot, which, for a spin-off, turns out to be well-tested.

And I’m not going to talk about all the historical nonsense because this is a cartoon and one can take licenses with history, even if it's always about the most total nonsense; oh well, it's a minor flaw...

The problem with minions is precisely the difficulty of reaching a broader audience: it’s a film for children just out of the womb, just as Inside Out is a more thoughtful film, suited for adults or pre-teens rather than kids. It fails to entertain, which is serious for a film of entertainment. And seeing it among the highest-grossing films of all time saddens me a bit: what the heck? Does this bullshit really make people laugh?

Highly not recommended. There is better than this commercially motivated operation (done terribly), look elsewhere if you don’t want to fall asleep in the theater.