by Josh Sewell
Minions: The Rise of Gru
(Rated PG for some action/violence and rude humor. Opens in theaters on July 1.)
Some reviews are 100 percent unnecessary, which certainly applies to the latest installment of the long-running, lucrative ($3.7 billion worldwide and counting) Despicable Me franchise. I doubt children are trembling with anticipation at what film critics think about the adventures of supervillain Gru (Steve Carell) and his yellow, gibberish-spouting associates.
Nevertheless, Minions: The Rise of Gru (technically the second prequel to the main series, but does it really matter?) is a moderately entertaining diversion. There are just enough laughs packed into the 87-minute running time to make kids happy and keep their parents from falling asleep.
This time around, the action takes place in the 1970s, where preteen Gru is growing up in the suburbs and dreaming of joining the Vicious 6 (a team of villains voiced by Alan Arkin, Taraji P. Henson, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Danny Trejo, and Lucy Lawless). When his job interview goes south, he steals a precious artifact in an attempt to impress them. Instead, he earns their wrath and must turn to minions Kevin, Stuart, Bob and Otto (all voiced by Pierre Coffin) to bail him out of a deadly predicament.
I’m not a famous actor (shocking, right?), but I have to imagine that voicing a popular character in a blockbuster animated franchise is the pinnacle of dream gigs. Carell has about 20 minutes of dialogue in the entire flick, meaning he got paid an obscene amount of money to spend a couple of days in a recording booth. No judgment here: he knows how much these flicks make for Universal, as well as the value of having his name on the poster.
But most people realized long ago that the true stars of this series are the goofy yellow guys whose antics hearken back to comedies of the silent era, which relied on physical comedy and absurd sight gags for punchlines. In that respect, the predictable formula still works in The Rise of Gru, although there is the added bonus of hearing classic ’70s rock songs performed in “minion-ese.” (I’m guessing the movie’s music budget was equivalent to the gross domestic product of a small country.)
The filmmakers long ago entered into “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it territory,” but audiences don’t seem to mind, and the financial results speak for themselves. That’s why Despicable Me 4 is currently slated to hit theaters in 2024.
Grade: B-
Elvis
(Rated PG-13 for substance abuse, strong language, suggestive material and smoking. Now playing in theaters.)
Director Baz Luhrmann doesn’t have a reputation for subtlety, as evidenced by his garish, larger-than-life films like Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge! Considering his track record, it makes total sense he’d eventually tackle the life of Elvis Presley, a superstar who wasn’t exactly known for restraint or understatement. It’s a perfect match of auteur and subject.
However, much like his take on The Great Gatsby and its ideal casting of Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role, Elvis works much better in theory than in practice. The 159-minute movie is never boring, but its many parts end up being more compelling than the whole.
Luhrmann, along with his co-writers Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner, make the curious decision to tell the story of Elvis (Austin Butler, in a star-is-born performance that will undoubtedly launch him to the top tier of Best Actor contenders) through the eyes of his villainous manager, Colonel Tom Parker (a puzzlingly miscast Tom Hanks, giving it his all nevertheless). The concept of an unreliable narrator tying Elvis to America’s propensity for mythmaking is an ambitious choice, but the screenplay never really goes beyond fuzzy platitudes.
That’s also true for Luhrmann eschewing traditional biopic tropes (for the first half, at least) in an attempt to gloss over frequent criticisms of Presley’s tendency toward cultural appropriation – taking ‘inspiration” from Black musicians and becoming far more successful than the artists who created the songs in the first place. The director also takes massive creative liberties to chronicle Presley’s supposed friendship with legendary artist B.B. King (the always-engaging Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and his reaction to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.
It’s a herculean effort to make the media-dubbed “King of Rock and Roll” seem much more progressive and attuned to the Civil Rights movement than he was. Perhaps that’s why Elvis omits Presley’s crazed obsession with “law and order” in his later years, culminating in a bizarre Oval Office visit with Richard Nixon in 1970. For more obvious reasons, Luhrmann zooms through the artist’s courtship of Priscilla Beaulieu (Olivia DeJonge) – which began when he was 24 and she was 14 – so the film can depict their married life instead.
Yes, the United States was a different place in the mid-20th century, for better in some cases and much, much worse in others. But by glossing over Presley’s more troubling biographical elements, Luhrmann has crafted a tribute to a martyr rather than an honest look at an undeniably fascinating, but massively flawed, American icon. That’s one of the many reasons Elvis simply runs out of gas by the end credits, rather than leading up to a grand concluding statement that Luhrmann believes he’s making.
Grade: B-
(Rated PG for some action/violence and rude humor. Opens in theaters on July 1.)
Some reviews are 100 percent unnecessary, which certainly applies to the latest installment of the long-running, lucrative ($3.7 billion worldwide and counting) Despicable Me franchise. I doubt children are trembling with anticipation at what film critics think about the adventures of supervillain Gru (Steve Carell) and his yellow, gibberish-spouting associates.
Nevertheless, Minions: The Rise of Gru (technically the second prequel to the main series, but does it really matter?) is a moderately entertaining diversion. There are just enough laughs packed into the 87-minute running time to make kids happy and keep their parents from falling asleep.
This time around, the action takes place in the 1970s, where preteen Gru is growing up in the suburbs and dreaming of joining the Vicious 6 (a team of villains voiced by Alan Arkin, Taraji P. Henson, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Danny Trejo, and Lucy Lawless). When his job interview goes south, he steals a precious artifact in an attempt to impress them. Instead, he earns their wrath and must turn to minions Kevin, Stuart, Bob and Otto (all voiced by Pierre Coffin) to bail him out of a deadly predicament.
I’m not a famous actor (shocking, right?), but I have to imagine that voicing a popular character in a blockbuster animated franchise is the pinnacle of dream gigs. Carell has about 20 minutes of dialogue in the entire flick, meaning he got paid an obscene amount of money to spend a couple of days in a recording booth. No judgment here: he knows how much these flicks make for Universal, as well as the value of having his name on the poster.
But most people realized long ago that the true stars of this series are the goofy yellow guys whose antics hearken back to comedies of the silent era, which relied on physical comedy and absurd sight gags for punchlines. In that respect, the predictable formula still works in The Rise of Gru, although there is the added bonus of hearing classic ’70s rock songs performed in “minion-ese.” (I’m guessing the movie’s music budget was equivalent to the gross domestic product of a small country.)
The filmmakers long ago entered into “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it territory,” but audiences don’t seem to mind, and the financial results speak for themselves. That’s why Despicable Me 4 is currently slated to hit theaters in 2024.
Grade: B-
(Rated PG-13 for substance abuse, strong language, suggestive material and smoking. Now playing in theaters.)
Director Baz Luhrmann doesn’t have a reputation for subtlety, as evidenced by his garish, larger-than-life films like Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge! Considering his track record, it makes total sense he’d eventually tackle the life of Elvis Presley, a superstar who wasn’t exactly known for restraint or understatement. It’s a perfect match of auteur and subject.
However, much like his take on The Great Gatsby and its ideal casting of Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role, Elvis works much better in theory than in practice. The 159-minute movie is never boring, but its many parts end up being more compelling than the whole.
Luhrmann, along with his co-writers Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner, make the curious decision to tell the story of Elvis (Austin Butler, in a star-is-born performance that will undoubtedly launch him to the top tier of Best Actor contenders) through the eyes of his villainous manager, Colonel Tom Parker (a puzzlingly miscast Tom Hanks, giving it his all nevertheless). The concept of an unreliable narrator tying Elvis to America’s propensity for mythmaking is an ambitious choice, but the screenplay never really goes beyond fuzzy platitudes.
That’s also true for Luhrmann eschewing traditional biopic tropes (for the first half, at least) in an attempt to gloss over frequent criticisms of Presley’s tendency toward cultural appropriation – taking ‘inspiration” from Black musicians and becoming far more successful than the artists who created the songs in the first place. The director also takes massive creative liberties to chronicle Presley’s supposed friendship with legendary artist B.B. King (the always-engaging Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and his reaction to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.
It’s a herculean effort to make the media-dubbed “King of Rock and Roll” seem much more progressive and attuned to the Civil Rights movement than he was. Perhaps that’s why Elvis omits Presley’s crazed obsession with “law and order” in his later years, culminating in a bizarre Oval Office visit with Richard Nixon in 1970. For more obvious reasons, Luhrmann zooms through the artist’s courtship of Priscilla Beaulieu (Olivia DeJonge) – which began when he was 24 and she was 14 – so the film can depict their married life instead.
Yes, the United States was a different place in the mid-20th century, for better in some cases and much, much worse in others. But by glossing over Presley’s more troubling biographical elements, Luhrmann has crafted a tribute to a martyr rather than an honest look at an undeniably fascinating, but massively flawed, American icon. That’s one of the many reasons Elvis simply runs out of gas by the end credits, rather than leading up to a grand concluding statement that Luhrmann believes he’s making.
Grade: B-
Reach out to Josh Sewell on Twitter @IAmJoshSewell
Comments
Post a Comment