Minions - 90 Minutes of Pure Gibberish

Minions movie review

Ever since I watched the 1st Despicable Me film, the only thing that filled my head after walking out of the theatre were the cute, little munchkins called 'Minions'. The way they walked, talked, and thought had audiences laughing uncontrollably, especially when you think about how they came to be was an interesting idea to grasp. But after watching  the teaser trailer of 'Minions', I began to grow dull of the mostly-at-times incomprehensible gibberish the yellow beasts sputtered to themselves and others. I've never written a bad review on my blog before, but I definitely felt this was a slight disappointment.

To be frank, I wasn't as excited to see 'Minions' on the big screen at first, but I loved the Despicable Me films. I did have some doubts at first, but after seeing the movie I thought it was a mediocre spin-off of the Despicable Me franchise. To begin with the positive aspects of the film, it began with a flash through time of how the Minions have had different evil leaders in several different eras and that turned out interesting for me. They themselves had some hilarious moments which helped out the film by a lot, and the human characters featured in the film had some humorous dialogue and great physical comedy which otherwise made it a generic kid's flick. 

The animation looked gorgeous; each character is nicely detailed and colored and the backgrounds look astonishing in their own ways. In addition, the character models look very unique and distinguishable, with no one model looking similar to another. The movie had some historical accuracies as well, such as when the Minions that where left in Antarctica make it to Sydney in 1968, and the Opera House is still under construction. The Opera House wasn't complete until 1973, making the movie accurate and well researched.

Unfortunately, the movie wasn't perfect. One of the biggest problems with this movie was the main villain Scarlet Overkill. Now don't get me wrong, I thought the character and her motivations were marvelous, I just felt that her personality wasn't as fulfilling and exciting as the trailers told us. While Sandra Bullock did a great job at voicing her, she occasionally sounded bored and uninterested. I wouldn't have actually minded if her husband, Herb, was the main villain, as he felt cool and energetic throughout the entire movie. Another thing I didn't like was how under-utilised the Nelson family was. They were funny and matched the tone of the movie perfectly, but their only purpose was to give Kevin, Stuart and Bob a ride to Villain-Con. What made it worse was that the father, Mr. Nelson, was voiced by Michael Keaton, one of the most talented people in this movie, and he felt completely wasted in the film.

I really like how the script retains the overall crazy attitude of the minions. All that goofy dialogue are really funny indeed, that it will crack your laugh as soon as the movie picks up its narration. The thing is many of the film's comedy has been badly spoiled by those many trailers dated from as early as last December, and the funny stuff that's not in the trailers couldn't really top those which are. To finish this review off, 'Minions' will be rated a meager score of 5/10!

Jurassic World - 1993 Vol. 2

Jurassic World movie review

I'm not a 90's kid or anything, but I seem to convey a love towards the 'Jurassic Park' franchise. Jurassic World is the 4th installment in the franchise, and also the 2nd film which Steven Spielberg did not direct starts off well with enough call backs to the 1st installment of the JP franchise, but it quickly turns into a monster movie with a killer dinosaur on the loose that was spliced with DNA from other dinosaur species in order to increase visitor attendance.

To start off this review, I would like to say that Jurassic World doesn't follow up much of the story of the original 'Jurassic Park' film and 'The Lost World: Jurassic Park', but I can accept that because I like to hear new ideas and stories. My main complaint here is that the film lacks the dramatic and suspenseful elements of that in typical monster movies. Like in "Jurassic Park', you never got to look at the T-rex during the tour, nor when it was given a goat to feed on, but you finally got a first look at it during the heavy rainstorm and right when the electricity was cut just as they were passing through the T-rex fence on the way back to the visitor centre. Here, it is just a genetically-modified hybrid dinosaur which can camouflage itself from thermal scanners used ONE TIME throughout the entire movie!

For its creature feature, the film works well and it gives you your money's worth of showing you dinosaurs doing collateral damage to park property and personnel with the occasional park visitor being killed for good measure. Throw in Chris Pratt, whose character is a soldier-turned-raptor trainer, and he unleashes his raptor squad to help stop the killer dinosaur. Throw in a human antagonist (Vincent D'Onofrio) for the protagonist to fight with who would blow the whole island up just to destroy this monster and add a human element like two lost children who are related to a employee at this crazy theme park who, by the way, has the hots for our hero and you have the entire plot right there.

The dinosaur effects in this film are probably the best in the series so far and while there are moments of obvious CGI, it really does not distract from how far SFX have come over the years from the first film to this one. In terms of dinosaur carnage, this film comes in a little behind The Lost World in that department but not by much. The body count is higher here than in any of the other films in the series but lacks the tension and showmanship that 'Jurassic Park' and 'The Lost World' had in spades. It's however head & shoulders above what "Jurassic Park 3' had in those departments. Not to mention the fact that while the script for Jurassic World is fairly predictable, it does not overstay it's welcome. Unlike the underwritten 'Jurassic Park 3' with its very unlikeable characters.

It's hard enough to keep a franchise going, especially when you're dealing with dinosaurs walking the earth. You will eventually hit a wall in terms of storytelling if your primary goal is to keep turning these films out with out any care what so ever. We saw that with 'Jurassic Park 3' where all the plot points from the previous two films were abandon for a B-movie creature feature. 'Jurassic World' tries hard to correct that by having the movie be about something a little more and try to connect itself to the first film of the series, and it's a much better film for it but it still ends up a creature feature all the same. To finish off, I will be scoring this monster-of-a-movie a moderate rating of 6.3/10!