For those who don’t watch TV or frequent chain stores or Facebook, here’s the real backstory of the Minions. Five years ago, these pencil-eraser-esque, googly-eyed, gibberish-spouting creatures were entertaining side characters in an above-average family flick called Despicable Me. Small children took so much pleasure in the Minions’ antics as they served (and often chaotically sabotaged) the film’s supervillain protagonist that a larger role in the 2013 sequel was inevitable.
Judging by their popularity in social-media memes and advertising, the following two years saw the Minions ascend to cultural icon status — an army of nonverbal Bart Simpsons for a new generation. Now they have their own movie, and it’s almost exactly what you’d expect: a hilarious romp for very small viewers, a bit painful for large ones.
Directed by Kyle Balda (The Lorax) and Pierre Coffin (both Despicable Mes), Minions offers a fictional version of the Minions’ backstory. A plummy-voiced narrator (Geoffrey Rush) guides us through the prehistory of the little dudes. (Or are they? Despite the use of male names and pronouns, the Minions’ lack of visible sex characteristics is a recurring gag.) From the beginning of time, we learn, Minions survived by glomming on to the biggest, baddest bullies in their environment. The symbiosis invariably went south for both parties, however, so the Minions eventually renounced their toadying ways and sought safety in isolation.
At this point, the action jumps to 1968, a date we’re asked to see as a turning point in Minion history, though it actually serves mainly as an excuse to put “far out” stereotypes on the screen and boomer favorites on the soundtrack. An unusually self-motivated Minion named Kevin (voiced, along with his brethren, by Coffin) thinks his people need a supervillain master once more. So he sets out, along with teenager-ish Stuart and cuddly, childish Bob, in search of evil. Eventually they find Scarlett Overkill (Sandra Bullock), a wasp-waisted charmer who recruits them to steal the Queen of England’s crown.
It’s a funny central conceit that clearly plays on children’s ambivalence about their dependence on big, strong, often inscrutable adults. The problem is, no one in the movie seems remotely like an adult, and the wildly zigzagging storyline might itself have been scripted by Minions. Portrayed as a none-too-bright aspiring high school Mean Girl (without the delicious slyness that Steve Carell gave his parallel character in Despicable Me), Scarlett Overkill never poses a plausible threat to the Minions, let alone the world. That leaves the story without tension or stakes. And it’s hard to root for characters who barely have differentiated identities — they’re just foci for joyful anarchy.
At its best, Minions is random to the point of trippiness, as in a scene where our heroes hypnotize the Queen’s guard and lead them in a half-naked Minion-speak rendition of the chorus of “Hair.” Far too often, though, the movie relies on tired slapstick and weak sight gags (A Minion in a medieval torture dungeon! A Minion riding one of the queen’s corgis! A Minion wearing a thong!) instead of finding humor in the Minions’ genuine alienness. The script barely acknowledges the apparent contradiction between their adorable innocence and their vocation of evil sycophancy, much less milk it for satire.
But satire takes life experience to appreciate — and this movie, more than many of its animated brethren, aims straight at the least seasoned viewers. While kids who crave more Minion havoc will probably leave satisfied, no one should come to Minions expecting the emotional arc of Frozen or Inside Out or even Despicable Me. WALL-E downplayed dialogue to tell a universal story through images; Minions downplays dialogue because its critters have nothing much to say. Their expressive jabber is fascinating until you start recognizing English, French and Spanish phrases — and realize they’re basically just speaking the new Esperanto of worldwide box-office domination.
This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2015.
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Margot I always appreciate your thoughtful reviews. And I can defend nothing about this story-less mess of a movie. A point here however: you describe the creatures as “gibberish-spouting” and “non-verbal”. They have their own language, which they understand and with which they meaningfully communicate completely effectively amongst their own. There’s a difference between a language YOU don’t understand, and gibberish. Is Farsi gibberish? Do you consider Thai, or Navajo or Gaelic (for example) gibberish because they may be languages you don’t yourself speak or write or comprehend? I would guess not. That line of thought is not consistent with what I believe I know of your otherwise smart, well-informed and fair reviews. Thanks for your consideration of this viewpoint.
Hi Green — Thanks for bringing up this interesting point. I’ve spent years studying languages that aren’t English, and feel great respect for them, including the many I don’t understand. But the Minions don’t speak an actual language, unless the filmmakers got a linguist on board to create one.
In which case, I’m impressed, and more power to Hollywood. But what I heard is a mishmash of random nonsense interspersed with opportunistic English, French, Spanish and Italian words and phrases. If Minions existed, yes, this would be a real language, and they would be verbal. But it’s hard to give the slightest credence to that fiction when no one on earth can comprehend their speech. The whole point of Minions, as I understand it, is that we don’t NEED to understand them because, as with preverbal children, their tone and actions reveal everything.
So, yes, I would describe what they speak as gibberish, just as the made-up languages actors speak in improv scenes are gibberish. We call Klingon and Elvish languages because their creators made an earnest effort to structure them like actual languages. But Minion-ese? All I can say is, if that were a real language, I wish the movie had had subtitles, because maybe what they were saying would have revealed that every Minion is a tiny yellow Einstein or an epigram-spouting Oscar Wilde. You never know.
We’ll have to disagree on this. WIthin the construct of the world created in this movie, the minions do communicate to complete effect with each other, using their own language. It makes no sense to us, and as you point out, it does not need to. But it makes complete sense to them, and is therefore a working language for the minions in this construct. Of course this is also a “1968” world where giant red “Z”-shaped personal spaceships, supervillians and apparently flexible laws of physics also exist. The language is probably the least of the suspensions of disbelief Minions imposes on its audience.
Margot, a final thought on this. You write: “But it’s hard to give the slightest credence to that fiction when no one on earth can comprehend their speech.”
Then I must ask, what IS your criteria for credible language in movies?
The minions aren’t unique in movie history in using their own proprietary language. In fact it’s not uncommon at all for movie characters to speak languages that only exist within the world created in that film, and comprehended by no one in the real world on earth. Sometimes with the benefit of subtitles for the rest of us, sometimes without. And though I don’t speak or write Na’vi, or R2D2, or High Elven (or numerous other examples) myself, it cannot be disputed that the characters are nonetheless communicating with the coherent language of the world created in that film. Would you say that the elves in the LOTR series are jabbering and speaking gibberish? Or is High Elven more able to be accepted as a valid “language”, even though it’s still completely fictitious, because some written form of it (also, obviously, completely made up) exists in Tolkein’s writing as a precedent? I guess if the minions aren’t speaking their own language, then the elves and Na’vi aren’t either?
I suppose I’m puzzled by your assertion because it doesn’t stand up when examined in the larger context of the linguistically diverse, fictional worlds historically created by filmmakers.
I see your point, Green, and I would not refer to a language used in an SFF film as “gibberish.” But I don’t believe it is inherently bigoted or racist to use such a word to refer to the made-up language of beings who don’t exist, and I don’t believe MINIONS gives us any compelling reason to take its world building (a term I hesitate even to use) seriously.
By the same token, many critics have made cracks about the apparent sexlessness (or asexual reproduction) of the Minions. Is this disrespectful to sexual diversity and fluidity among actual human beings? I don’t think so. It’s merely a way of pointing out that Minions are inherently absurd. And it’s clear their creators intended them that way, because they made no effort whatsoever to create a plausible world or consistent characters.
You seem to find the word “gibberish” inherently offensive and off limits, but I disagree — there’s no other good term for a “language” one makes up as one goes along. And in this case, the nonsense of it is kind of the point. Any kid who wants to can “speak Minion” by stringing together some syllables.
It might even have been a funny point if the filmmakers had made it more creatively. (Did you notice that some human characters appear to understand the Minions with no trouble, while others, like Scarlett Overkill, do not? That distinction could have gone somewhere, but it didn’t.)
I’m sure there’s a critical theory dissertation in this topic somewhere. 🙂