Minions: The Rise of Gru — Despicable mediocrity

Minions are a species of undersized yellow henchmen powered along by a burning need to serve an evil boss. Durable and bumbling, they’ve served the Despicable Me sequence well, performing random pratfalls and acts of cartoon violence in the background.

The critters’ standalone 2015 film, while no Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead or Frasier as sidekick spin-offs go, was lively and silly enough to justify its existence.

This follow-up, conversely, reminds one of that grim period in the early 21st century when every other animation seemed to feature cartoon animals leaping around to the strains of Funkytown.

What’s this? Oh yes. St Vincent’s cover of Funkytown on The Rise of Gru’s slick Jack Antonoff-produced soundtrack.

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In keeping with the tunes, no expense has been spared on the voice cast, even if RZA, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Lucy Lawless, Dolph Lundgren, and Danny Trejo are given scandalously little to do as the Vicious 6, a superstar team of villains idolised by the young Gru (Steve Carell) during the 1970s.

When Belle Bottom (Taraji P Henson), the de facto leader of the villains, muscles out founding member Wild Knuckles (Alan Arkin), Gru is excited to interview for the vacancy. That, alas, doesn’t go according to plan.

Meanwhile, the minions are dispatched to look for some magical amulet. Gru’s mother (Julie Andrews) has a guru and a Tupperware party as part of a series of 1970s references. Michelle Yeoh pops up as a kung fu master. There’s a brief origins story for Russell Brand’s Dr Nefario. There are a few 007 references that, to be fair, make for better James Bond scenes than anything in the recent fam-dram weepie No Time to Die.

None of these skits congeals into anything like a plot. The inclusion of a disco torture machine that plays Andrea True’s More More More on a loop is not dissimilar to experiencing the incessant soundtrack, which is often deployed as a lazy means of running down the clock. Can the Minions go back to being minions again?