Year 17, Day 14 - 1/14/25 - Movie #4,914
BEFORE: You can see here why I moved "Will & Harper" out of the Doc Block and into January, this put THREE movies in a row that are all eligible for Oscar nominations, though I think it's probably a lot more likely that "Inside Out 2" will get one over "Despicable Me 4", the idea is the same. After all, it's not up to me which films get nominations, right now I can only work with what is Oscar-eligible, which is, umm, nearly everything. But for animated features, there aren't that many of them each year, so I should probably do what I can do, and cross another one off the list tonight. Even if I end up seeing two or three movies that win Oscars in any category, I'll feel like I'm ahead of the game.
Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig carry over from "Will & Harper".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Despicable Me 3" (Movie #2,720), "Minions: The Rise of Gru" (Movie #4,246)
AFTER: This is certainly not a franchise that thinks that "Less is More" - no way, more is more. More villains, more children in the family, more minions, more more more! Only sometimes more isn't better, it's just more. They added four new emotions in Riley's brain in "Inside Out 2" and the story justified it, because puberty, but then it all added up to something meaningful, it was more but it was also so much more than more. This franchise doesn't really have a purpose, maybe it never did, except to entertain, but then I'm left kind of scratching my head, wondering why they're choosing to go about doing that in such an odd fashion. Just me?
Gru was a villain, he stole the moon, they made sure we understood where he was coming from, he likes to steal things because that's what villains do. The fourth installment in the direct storyline of the franchise (and sixth overall if you count the "Minions" prequels) takes pains to remind us that Gru once stole the moon - but he put it back, the numbskull and oh yeah, was he just bad at being a villain, because that seems almost like it's ironic, but it's not. He joined the Anti-Villain League, which seems like maybe a bunch of self-hating heroes who can't bring themselves to use that word, or that we're being tricked into still liking these movies even though we're all suffering from superhero burn-out after watching 87 Marvel movies and a few more from DC.
So there's no capes in the "Despicable Me" movies, and the villains greatly outnumber the, umm, anti-villains, but you know, that's OK because there's only one Spider-Man (OK, actually there's two now, three if you count the one from 2099, more if you count the Peter Parker clones, and like a zillion if you count the whole multiverse) but there are like 100 villains for that one hero. Ah, so THAT's why they created the other-dimensional Spider-Mans, so the original wouldn't be outnumbered and he'd have a fighting chance. Just kidding, he's still that guy who can't get to his aunt's house for dinner or get his photos to the Daily Bugle before deadline.
Gru keeps on doing what he does, too, and so they have to keep thinking up weirder and weirder villains for him to secretly take down. There was that one voiced by Trey Parker in "Despicable Me 3", Balthazar Bratt, but honestly he wasn't that remarkable, or memorable. Really there hasn't been a GREAT villain in the franchise since Scarlet Overkill in the "Minions" prequel. And the second "Minions" film had too MANY villains, which is the same problem but in reverse, and it was similarly out of balance. There, I said it.
The villain here has cockroach-based hybrid powers, which is not only very weird but a bit disgusting, also you don't really think about roaches as being strong or durable, not unless there's a nuclear war and we've been told, perhaps incorrectly, that they're the only creatures who will survive it. Also they're not smart, not attractive, they're just nasty. Why would Gru's rival want to turn himself into a cockroach, and then why would any of us in the audience want to see that? Just because "kids like bugs"? Sorry, but parents and other adults have to watch these movies, too, and you're grossing us out.
Also he hates Gru because Gru sang "Karma Chameleon" in a high-school talent show before he could? That's stupid. Why not hate Gru because he trained to be a villain and he's not fulfilling that, he betrayed all villains everywhere by working for the AVL, or is that a secret? It's still a much better reason to hate Gru. Or Maxime could hate Gru because he's got a family and Maxime doesn't, that would make a bit more sense than this whole Boy George thing. Come on, be honest, was this plot based around which 80's songs the production company could get the rights to? The use of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" at the end fits in this film a LOT better than "Karma Chameleon" does - but for both songs, the question's the same, are today's kids even going to KNOW either of those songs?
When Maxime escapes from prison, he vows to take revenge on Gru and Gru's family, so the agency moves them to a safe house in another city, while the Minions are housed at the AVL and five of them are turned into super-hero Minions, which is sure to be both a terrible idea and also very important when the storylines intersect near the end. Sure enough, the Mega Minions cause a great deal of collateral damage and they are retired, because who knew giving super powers to creatures that can't talk or think and just want to prank everyone would be a bad idea? Umm, pretty much everyone could have seen that coming.
But meanwhile in the quiet, upscale town of Mayflower, the Gru family becomes the Cunninghams and tries to blend in, with their three daughters and the three minions they were able to keep for some reason, despite the fact that nobody else in town has three yellow chattering non-definable creatures in their house. Umm, so how is that "blending in" if they still have three disastrous minions living with them? Their neighbors are the Prescotts, who are not any kind of heroes or villains, they're just white people who go to a country club. But their DAUGHTER recognizes Gru and she has aspirations to be a super-villain herself, so she blackmails Gru into stealing his old high-school's mascot, which is a live honey badger. (What could POSSIBLY go wrong there?)
I guess the plan is for her to steal the mascot, and then use that as proof that she should attend school there? That doesn't really make sense, because stealing the mascot will piss off the headmaster, and then she'll be LESS inclined to let Penny Prescott in, not more. They manage to steal the vicious creature somehow, but who brings a BABY to a heist? That's ill-advised and dangerous, and the baby's almost as stupid as the Minions. They get the honey badger and escape in a flying car, but the headmaster has a tracker in the animal's collar, and she alerts Maxime (her favorite ex-student) about where Gru's living with his family. OK, then, that was really a waste of everybody's time putting them in the safe house, wasn't it? This storyline just wants to turn itself around and keeps contradicting itself at every possible opportunity. Guys, we could have gotten somewhere a lot faster if you'd just stopped adding more, more, more to it.
There's a big battle with the flying roach ship and also the headmaster in her super-enhanced wheelchair, and there's a construction site that gets destroyed before the Mega Minions get called out of retirement and they show up with all manner of creatures in tow to run over the bad guy. All because "more is better", but it just isn't so. Finally Gru visits his old rival in prison and they reconcile with karaoke, sort of, and pretty much every character from the whole series of films is there at the prison, so you know, that feels like a pretty good note to end the franchise on, everything's wrapped up. No more kids, no more weird pets, no more outrageous villains, just realize there's a law about diminishing returns and really, we're very, very far now from where this whole thing started.
But I know they won't end it, because this film alone made almost a billion dollars, and so they're only going to make more, aren't they? It's just never going to end.
Also starring the voices of Steve Carell (last heard in "IF"), Joey King (last seen in "Bullet Train"), Sofia Vergara (last heard in "Strays"), Stephen Colbert (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), Chloe Fineman (last seen in "Babylon"), Miranda Cosgrove (last seen in "Yours, Mine & Ours"), Steve Coogan (last seen in "The Trip to Greece"), Pierre Coffin (last heard in "Minions: The Rise of Gru"), Dana Gaier (last heard in "Despicable Me 3"), Madison Polan, Tara Strong (last heard in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Chris Renaud (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets 2"), John DiMaggio (last heard in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie"), Laraine Newman (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Brad Ableson, Romesh Ranganathan (last heard in "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget").
RATING: 5 out of 10 security laser beams
No comments:
Post a Comment