Wow.  What an honest to goodness disappointment.  I wasn’t expecting that at all when I went to go see this.  Perhaps Pixar’s Inside Out (2015) just set the bar too high for me this summer when it came to an animated movie, but man, what a shame, since I really love these little guys.

Part of the problem would have to be the fact that if you watch all the trailers, you really have, unfortunately, seen pretty much the entire movie.  There wasn’t really much added in terms of story or humor beyond them.

The whole new villain thing seemed unnecessary.  I think I would have liked this story better if they either skipped over Scarlet Overkill, or they had made that a brief part of the Minions becoming part of Gru’s team.  I think the movie would have been a hundred times better if they focused mostly on how the Minions became part of Gru’s team, and on whatever heists they worked on together that made Gru a criminal mastermind.  (I even wonder if it would have been even funnier if the Minions and Gru had first met at the convention.)  In fact, I was actually surprised that this movie made me realize how necessary Gru is for the Minions.  I suppose that’s ironic.

One thing I think Inside Out did well that I think this movie didn’t do so well in was balancing the kiddie and adult humor, to keep all ages entertained.  Inside Out proved to me that there’s no need to really go too far with the adult-themed jokes, and if anything I think the inclusion of such humor in Minions just made the whole thing worse.

Overall, I think the whole story wasn’t all that funny like I had been hoping.  I only found myself laughing at parts that I found funny because I had seen them in the trailers and found them funny then.

Final Thoughts: Not sure I would recommend this to watch in theaters or view as a rental.  There were a considerable number of points where I actually felt like the movie was dragging on a bit too long, and I didn’t really find myself enjoying the movie much until the end, and I mean the very end.  Like the last five minutes, maybe.  Which reminds me, I think the first few minutes of the end credits are worth watching, for the animated extra, but beyond that there’s nothing at the very end of the movie.  At least, none that I can recall.