Not since the Three Stooges has nonsense been this much fun. Over five movies, the frantic, Tic Tac-shaped Minions, the silly sidekicks to former supervillain Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), have brought the most kid friendly anarchy to the screen since Curly said, “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk,” for the first time.
Their new movie, “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” now playing in theatres, sets a new standard for silliness.
Set in 1976 San Francisco, the story begins with awkward twelve-year-old Gru and his dream.
“There are a lot of villains in the world,” he says, “but I am going to be a supervillain.”
To make his evil wish come true, he interviews to become a member of the world’s top outlaw team, the Vicious 6. But, he is not taken seriously. At all.
“I am pretty despicable,” Gru says proudly. “You don’t want to cross me.”
“Evil is for adults who steal powerful ancient stones and wreak havoc,” says Belle Bottom (Taraji P. Henson), the newly-appointed head of The Vicious 6, who took over from the former, recently deposed Wild Knuckles (Alan Arkin). “Not for tubby little punks, who should be at school learning, taking a recess and sucking his thumb! Come back when you’ve done something evil to impress me!”
To prove he’s got what it takes to be a supervillain, Gru steals something near and dear to the peach-pit sized hearts of the Vicious 6, their prized Zodiac Stone. Instead of impressing Belle Bottom, the theft turns her against Gru and his loyal Minions. With the mad, bad and dangerous to know Vicious 6 on their tail, Gru is kidnapped by Wild Knuckles. “My favorite villain is also my kidnapper,” marvels Gru. “This is going to be a great opportunity if you don’t kill me.”
Cue the Minion mayhem.
“The Minions: The Rise of Gru” provides fans of the franchise exactly what they want, no deep thoughts, just sublime silliness.
If you want to get all film critic-y about this, I suppose you could say the leitmotif is that of sweetly-inspired mayhem that follows the Minions wherever they go. But this isn’t a movie with layers of subtext or loads of diegetic elements. There is a denouement, a resolution to the story, but why overthink this? It’s short, fast and stupid, with an easily digested message of, as Armistead Maupin always says, finding your logical, not biological family. Or, as Gru says, “find your tribe and never let them go.” More zesty than arty, it’s made for kids, who I’m sure will gobble it up, while parents sit patiently through the 85 minute runtime with visions of the Three Stooges dancing in their heads.
Every action movie worth their salt has a catchphrase, and “Nobody,” in theatres only, has a pretty good one. “Don’t call 911,” Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) says to his wife (Connie Nielsen) before taking on an army of baddies. It’s his “I’ll be back,” a line that tells you everything you need to know about the character’s confidence in his special set of skills.
But, when we first meet him unassuming suburban dad Hutch leads a life of quiet desperation. Under appreciated at home, a joke at work, he makes Rodney Dangerfield look like a well-respected man about town by comparison.
He is, by his own admission, a nobody.
When burglars invade his home, his son (Gage Munroe) fights back, but Hutch freezes. Later, when one of the cops of the scene says, “You know, if this was my family…” Hutch’s humiliation hangs heavy in the unspoken words.
But there’s more to Hutch than meets the eye. Turns out he’s an everyman who can kill every man. A former clean-up guy for “one of those three letter organizations,” he left the game for a normal life, but “over-corrected” and became everybody’s doormat. “I always knew it was a facade,” he says of his suburban life, “but it lasted longer than I expected.”
The aftermath of the burglary awakens a long dormant piece of his personality and when he single-handedly takes on a group of Russian toughs on a bus—to the strains of Steve Lawrence crooning “I’ve Gotta Be Me”—he earns the attention of karaoke singing crime boss Yulian Kuznetsov (Aleksey Serebryakov).
What follows is a violent, funny mix of “John Wick” and “Home Alone.”
There isn’t much to “Nobody” except for Hutch’s transformation and his ever-escalating way of offing the hordes of gun toting goons sent to silence him. Director Ilya Naishuller keeps the narrative to a minimum, doling out the exposition in the form of action instead of words. It’s fun, fast-paced and owes a nod to Guy Ritchie’s patented tricky editing and may be the most unexpected good time at the movies since terrible people killed John Wick’s dog.
From bewildered to badass, Odenkirk is an unlikely action star. Slight and wiry, he’s a like a coiled snake, and when he strikes he takes a lickin’ but keeps on tickin’. Unlike most action stars he gets the crap knocked out of him, but like most action stars, he’s relentless. It’s about as far away from his work on the “Mr. Show” as you could get. It’s more like a bloodied and bruised 1970s one man army character—think Charles Bronson—than anything he has done before.
It’s a compelling character, but a movie like “Nobody” is nothing without the fight scenes. Rest assured the action sequences are, as Hutch’s dad David (Christopher Lloyd) says, “just a bit excessive, but glorious.”
Paul Walker’s untimely death in November of last year cut short a fast and furious career. The handsome leading man specialized in high-octane movies that often valued action over story. The “Fast and Furious” films made him a star and defined his testosterone-steeped genre. His new film, “Brick Mansion” is another pedal-to-the-metal actioner that could easily have been titled “The Fast and the Frenetic.”
Based on a ten-year-old French movie called “District 13,” this time around the story is set in Detroit just a few years from now. The film largely takes place inside a walled off, run down neighborhood called Brick Mansions. The bankrupt city has abandoned the area, leaving it to Tremaine (RZA), a drug lord who rules his mini kingdom with an iron fist. When he comes in control of a neutron bomb, undercover cop Damien Collier (Walker) is teamed with anti-drug crusader and parkour expert Lino (David Belle) to find the bomb and Tremaine in just ten hours.
“Brick Mansions” is the kind of movie where the hero says, ‘This is a really bad idea,” before doing some crazy, dangerous stunt. The action and story (by Luc Besson) are by-the-book—the “find the bomb!” plotline boils down to the oldest thriller tricks, the ticking bomb—but are performed with zeal by Walker and Belle, who is one of the inventors of parkour. The stunts are wild, although shot in such a frenetic style it is occasionally hard to keep track of who is punching who.
Walker is suitably stoic as the straight-arrow undercover cop. He’s physical—flipping through the air like a Cirque du Soleil gymnast without mussing his perfect hair—and doesn’t step out of his (and his audience’s) action movie comfort zone.
In fact, no one goes too far out of their comfort zones. RZA is brings some menace to Mr. “I don’t do anxious. I cause anxious.” Tremaine, and Belle never saw a window or an opening he couldn’t swing through feet first.
Despite having one of the silliest feel good endings in the history of action movies, “Brick Mansions” is an engaging movie. It won’t engage your brain, but is wild enough to keep your eyes glued to the screen.
