Despicable Me & Minions

[LotsoA113]

Epic's OK, but the way I feel about Epic is the same way I feel about Rise of The Guardians: I respect more it's artistic ambitions than the actual film itself. There's ton of brilliant animation in it, and Actually thought the villain was one of the best seen in recent animated movies. But it's tone is kind of all over the place, the main character isn't that interesting and there's way too many characters. A mild disappointment, although I'd probably say it's a bit better than Despicable Me 2 or the previously mentioned Hotel Transylvania.

[Dacey]

Maybe I'm reading too much into the ratings, but I don't see how a movie can get a 4 out of 10 while having a 7 out of 10 in terms of "fun." A four out of ten is essentially two stars out of five, which generally seems like a "bad" rating in my book. But, again, I may be over-reading it.

[EricJ]

I thought the first film was "okay", nothing too special. And I don't get the Minions love. Alright, well, I get it, but they're just a variation on the green "ooooooooooohh" aliens from Toy Story, aren't they?

At our chain, we also get a theater PSA of Minions changing a lightbulb, just for an ad promoting brighter projectors.
They're Universal's own all-purpose Scrat, for those who subconsciously miss the days of opening short cartoons, feature movie be darned.
(The difference with Fox's Ice Age, however, is that with Despicable, we actually care about the feature it's supposed to plug, and all the cult-of-comedy-relief marketing is really a bit of a distraction.)

I'm just disappointed that more people are seeing this than are going to the big, fun-looking Lone Ranger.

Has the Ranger opened over there yet? Trust me, you'll KNOW why.

[Bill1978]

I admit I'm not interested in seeing The Lone Ranger as the marketing has me believe its actually Tonto: The Movie.

[Ben]

Epic sounds like all the other Blue Sky features, then.

Whatever Ice Age has become, there's no denying the first movie was fun, sweet and unexpectedly good. The sequels not so much, granted, but I do still believe that Scrat is the single most successful CG character created and animated by any studio. He's so perfectly tuned to "pure cinema" it's unreal, and the slapstick is as pure animation on a Jones/Avery level (combining the best of both) as has been done.

Keep your CG updates of the classic characters: Scrat is a classic character himself now. I really could sit and watch him for hours, unlike the painfully unfunny Coyote and Road-Runner "cartoon" I saw the other day.


Lone Ranger? I hear from a reliable source that this is one the audiences have wrong...

[EricJ]

Lone Ranger? I hear from a reliable source that this is one the audiences have wrong...

"I am the author, you are only the audience, I outrank you!"

For those still waiting and looking enviously at American symbols, this should help clear up some of the mystery: (SPOILERS aplenty, but consider it a public service)
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kateaurthur/the ... g-spoilers

Granted, neither movie this weekend is one we'd particularly like to encourage the studio with, but of the two, better the Minion you know.

[droosan]

I saw Despicable Me 2 and The Lone Ranger yesterday .. and I had a great time at both movies!

DM2 is more 'structured' than the first film, and is thus somewhat more 'predictable', story-wise .. but the visuals are still packed with delightful sight-gags and funny business (and not just from the Minions!), and with snappy 'fun-to-watch' french animation.

Agent Lucy Wilde is great fun as both a foil and as a love-interest for Gru .. except that Kristen Wiig's voice performance seemed only to be a slight variation of her scatter-brained 'Lola Bunny' from The Looney Tunes Show. Wiig had also voiced Miss Hattie (the orphanage director) in the first DM movie .. so, she certainly has the range to have done something different. Fortunately, I'm fond of both Lola and Lucy .. so, it works..!

This film's 'villain' is certainly a major improvement over the supremely-confident (and borderline-incompetent) Vector. However, a sub-plot involving Margo being smitten with the villain's son (accompanied by several Croods-esque 'over-protective daddy' gags) ultimately fizzles, and thus seems rather pointless (especially since -- in the first DM -- Gru's willingness to exploit such an innocuous "in" actually drove much of the movie's plot).

Ultimately, though, this movie's laughs more than balance-out its shortcomings (including its cast-wide ending dance number ) -- with Gru, Lucy and the girls coming to such a happy ending .. that a Minions Movie really seems to be the only way going forward.

--------------------------

The Lone Ranger is a fun western adventure, by turns darkly violent and (occasionally) somewhat silly.

It's not a straight-up adaptation of the radio/TV show; it's a Bruckheimer/Verbinski 'take' on it.

All I can say is, the author of that BuzzFeed article EricJ linked to seems utterly joyless and jaded. Certainly the movie is not without problems (it could have easily been a tighter film, had its running time been trimmed by about 30 minutes) .. but it is nowhere near the 'train-wreck' she describes.

I will admit that I am somewhat notoriously 'easy-to-please' .. it does take a lot for me to outright dislike a movie. But I genuinely enjoyed The Lone Ranger. I place it in the same category as John Carter and Speed Racer: movies that I attended with lowered expectations due to negative reviews .. and which -- after seeing them, and being thoroughly entertained -- led me to question whether those critics were watching these films at all.

[Dacey]

I place it in the same category as John Carter and Speed Racer: movies that I attended with lowered expectations due to negative reviews .. and which -- after seeing them, and being thoroughly entertained -- led me to question whether those critics were watching these films at all.

Nicely said.

[EricJ]

I will admit that I am somewhat notoriously 'easy-to-please' .. it does take a lot for me to outright dislike a movie. But I genuinely enjoyed The Lone Ranger. I place it in the same category as John Carter and Speed Racer: movies that I attended with lowered expectations due to negative reviews .. and which -- after seeing them, and being thoroughly entertained -- led me to question whether those critics were watching these films at all.

Carter and Speed Racer were both made with absolutely no attempts to apologize for their source material--quite the reverse, in fact--caught impatient audiences who had never heard of them, and took bad body-blows for release-dates and marketing.
In both cases, they suffered that knee-jerk audience-jury that confuses "It flopped because it didn't make money" with "It didn't make money because it flopped!" and assumes the two must be one and the same.
Although Speed Racer had Warner trying to hedge its mainstream bets by sticking in one scene of lame Cartoon Network jokes against Japanese anime, it's nowhere near TLR's cultural contempt of suggesting that Tonto was "the smart one" because the Ranger's law and order was too naive for the west.

Whatever faults the Ranger is suffering at the moment, think we can agree, it AIN'T for lack of marketing or a bad release date. Being "Big enough" doesn't stop you from making a lot of big, big mistakes.
Audiences expected a Despicable sequel to have the same heart and integrity to its story that the first one had, and, by doing a fairly straightforward sequel and not stepping off the rails, it did. A little of that, even secondhand, goes a long long way, and it seems, makes three times as much money.

[droosan]

I didn't get the impression that Tonto is 'smarter' than the Lone Ranger. Their philosophies are simply quite different.

In this particular film, Tonto 'knows' the villains quite a bit better, because he has literally been pursuing them since he was a child. The Lone Ranger has to puzzle some of this out for himself (alongside the audience), as the events of the movie unfold.

Also, keep in mind that Tonto is telling this story from his own perspective. The same story, told by the Ranger, might be somewhat different.

The Lone Ranger's 'near-death' experience is played for some comedy, in that he takes some suggestions from Tonto that he otherwise mightn't have. But I didn't take that to mean that he is 'stupid'.

Ultimately, each of them wants 'justice'. Their concepts of what constitutes justice differ greatly .. and yet, they are still able to work together to attain it.

[Dacey]

From James' review...

Unlike the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, where the action and humor came fast and furious, here for four-fifths of the film they are few and far between. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not necessarily saying the story was bad. I’m saying they just took too long to tell it.

Unfortunately, this is probably because Disney got paranoid and demanded budget cuts from the film after Cowboys & Aliens underperformed and Planet of the Apes....did well, which sucks because there were several moments in the movie that felt like they were setting up big action sequences, only to be cut short almost immediately. I got the same bitter taste from On Stranger Tides' action scenes, another film that Disney gave budget cuts to at the last minute.

The train chase at the end, though, was fantastic fun, finally giving me the same gleeful feeling I had when watching the first three Pirates films, especially Dead Man's Chest. I wish the entire movie could've had that feeling. Again, though, I still had a feeling of "what might have been" when watching it, since Verbinski originally had an even bigger sequence in mind (his goal was to make "the biggest train scene ever"), so I can't help but want to know what that would've been like.

As James said, cuts would've helped greatly. When an action movie isn't terribly heavy on action, it helps when the movie clocks it at two hours so the pacing is brisk and the audience doesn't notice as much until they get to the big finale (think Iron Man 2 or the first Fantastic Four film). Tonto's violent back story wasn't needed, and he and The Lone Ranger could've started their official adventure much earlier. And there were lots of little moments here and there that also could've been lost and saved for an extended cut or whatever on Blu-Ray.

Having said all of that, I do wish it were making more money, as I'd love to see a sequel, especially if it had the tone of the last act (although there several fun moments spread throughout the film, obviously). Sadly, the overblown running time is almost certainly going to hurt repeat business, and word of mouth.

As for Despicable Me 2--which, come to think of it, is what this topic is meant to be about lol--, I enjoyed it. If you liked the first one, you'll probably like this. If you didn't, well, your kids will at least be happy if you have them.

[Buzz Bumble]

It doesn't really show anything, but this is from ComingSoon.net ...

Check Out Teaser Art for the Despicable Me Spinoff, Minions!
We've got an early look at teaser artwork for Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment's Despicable Me franchise spinoff, Minions. Check it out below!

Minions serves as a big screen origin story and showcases the unpredictable personality and physicality of the popular yellow characters.

As it turns out, Minions have existed since the beginning of time. They have evolved from single (yellow) cell organisms into the familiar beings we know, and they live for a collective purpose: to seek out and serve the most despicable master they can find.

Academy Award winner Sandra Bullock will lead the voice cast of the human characters as Scarlett Overkill, the world's reigning super-villain of the 1960s while "Mad Men" star Jon Hamm is also attached to voice a character.

The 3D-CG comedy adventure is produced by Illumination's Chris Meledandri and Janet Healy, and directed by Pierre Coffin. Brian Lynch has written the screenplay for the film, which is co-directed by Kyle Balda. Chris Renaud serves as executive producer of the film.

Minions hits the big screen July 10, 2015.

[EricJ]

So, "Before the Minions Met Gru", thus not necessitating any contracted Despicable voice to repeat his role in the franchise.

(Btw, what was Despicable 2 about? I never saw one single trailer or ad that even remotely mentioned the plot!)

[Buzz Bumble]

Wait!! Movies have plots!? Since when??
I didn't see either of the movies, but from what little I understand, Dispicable Me 2: the bad guy from the first movie is now a good guy, and is recruited by a spy organisation to help defeat a new bad guy, and as usual his female spy partner is his love-interest.

[Ben]

Surprised they didn't call this Despicable Minions, so as to tie into the franchise but mark it out as not being a "continuative" third film.

Still, I guess almost everyone knows the Minions by now anyway...