Minions

I got tired of this joke before the movie ended, but I appreciate the gusto with which the filmmakers -- particularly Coffin, with his nimble vocalizations -- carried it out.

In its own helter-skelter way, Minions achieves a loony symmetry. It starts with evolution and ends with revolution.

With its episodic stream of slapstick gags, Minions has moments of piquant absurdity, but mostly its shrill-but-cutesy anarchy works as a visual sugar rush for the preschool set.

Fittingly, because they're pill-shaped, the Minions work best in small doses.

There's plenty of high-velocity comic inanity on display to keep kids happily diverted. But the movie's major flaw is an extension of its own premise: Search as they may, the minions never find a villain worthy of their subservience.

Seeing the minions end up in your Happy Meal would not have been a stretch in this absurd, tangential movie. (Actually, it would have been more to the point.)

Minions may not have the purposeful plotting of a Pixar film or the wondrous world-building of a work from Walt Disney Animation, but its hyperactive sense of humor and absurdist antics are admittedly amusing nevertheless.

The youngster target audience will probably love every minute of “Minions”. I was with them to a point, but once the story abandoned the quest to find a master it bogged down and the humor grew inconsistent.

Life is short. Minions was fun. What am I supposed to do?

They're essentially pantomime characters, but unlike, say, WALL•E, the characters of limited speech here don't evoke a range of emotions.