After two highly successful Despicable Me films (and a third one on the way), a spin-off/side project has arrived: a cheery little tale about the yellow, goggle-wearing blobs who unquestioningly serve Gru and enable all sorts of wickedness. They are the lineal descendants of Toy Story’s Pizza Planet Aliens, and first cousins to the Boov from Home.
The same production team – with the substitution of Kyle Balda as director alongside Pierre Coffin for Chris Renaud – have come up with a sort of prequel, tracing the path of the Minions from prehistoric single-cell beings to hapless pawns in supervillain Scarlett Overkill’s plot to snatch the British crown from Elizabeth II.
It’s well up to the standard of the hyperkinetic fun we’ve come to expect from this sort of thing, both knowing and silly, but there’s evidence of the subtle gear-change in CG cartoons’ target audience: they are definitely getting a bit kiddier than hitherto, and a lot less age-straddling than the first Pixar films managed back in the mid-90s. But it’s still boisterous enough.
