Movie Movie Podcast

I saw Despicable Me two years ago and I was awestruck at how simply funny and cute it was.  It didn’t go for the dick and farts of Dreamworks, or the heartwrenching heart-ness of Pixar, but it was well-balanced and great.  When a sequel was announced it made sense to me because it did really well, and they could always have Gru go up against another villain or something.  It’ll be out next summer, and I am relatively excited for it.  However, when they announced that they are also preparing a spinoff film starring the scene-stealing Minions, that when I got nervous.  The Minions were great cause they cause they were funny for adults and kids, and were always seemingly getting into some kind of trouble.  They were really fun to watch.  But heres the problem with them:  THEY DON’T SPEAK ENGLISH.  Speaking in a garbled language with no subtitles works when you are side-characters built on body language, but their exploits for an entire film might be way too much to sustain a film.  They’ll probably have to add an english speaking character just to serve as the straight man of sorts.

When Madagascar decided to make a spinoff cartoon and now a movie based around the Penguins that made sense.  People loved the penguins and they spoke.  So you got what was going on.  The Minions are the same type of character only far less intelligible.  My recommendation would have been to make a series of shorts based around the Minions for any new Illumination-based animated films.  Kids would eat those up and it’d keep the franchise alive between films.

Oh well.  Maybe it’ll good?  Probably not.