'Minions' review, starring Kevin, Stuart & Bob

As amusing as it is annoying, Minions — the plushy spin-off of the humanoid Twinkie scene-stealers from the Despicable Me movies — is just the crazy, nonsensical film you’d expect from the titular characters at the center frame.

It’s a non-stop look into commercial madness driven by a rampant fanbase as kooky as the squishy characters they adore, fearlessly beating down its zany style inside your brain until you hate it entirely or grow to enjoy the insanity in store. It’s a joke-first, sometimes cheap and lazy, throw-everything-and-the-yellow-kitchen-sink approach, but it works just enough to make an impact. The childlike, conspicuously oblivious characters have an unmistakable charm, and their bright goggle-eyed innocence is often infectious in how relentlessly appealing it wishes to be.

Unlike The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, which aimed for the same ludicrous results with little-to-no genuine cleverness, Minions actually squeezes in laughs through incorporating as many visual gags, bubble-gum inspiration and youthful wonder as it can with sheer force in ninety-minutes. Where previous animated spin-offs like Puss in Boots and Penguins of Madagascar tried too hard to justify their existence as something worthy of their previous appearances, Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda’s feature completely throws caution to the wind, letting the aimless characters run loose and wild, as they bask in their enthusiastic hysteria and bank it for all its worth.

Part of what made their appearances so alluring in their first theatrical outings was the mystery of their existence. What are there? Where did they come from? How exactly did these dim-witted Spongebob-looking Oompa Loompas end up working for Gru anyway? In exploring the Minions’ origins (they are apparently ageless, prehistoric beings who've been looking for a leader to drive them for thousands of years), the magic begins to fizzle. Minions is a bit of a double-whammy, as it's as much a prequel as it is a disjointed by-product of another franchise. It has no reason to work on paper, and giving reason to something which shouldn't have any whatsoever is especially counterproductive in capitalizing in the Minions' success.

And while this spin-off does occasionally get too caught up in some details that don't really matter — for instance, where their plaid overalls came to be — to Coffin and Balda's credit, their latest proejct rarely ever slows down to let these pointless asides take over from the wacky slapstick and free-wielding gags that made the Minions themselves such a hit before. Studying diligently from the Looney Tunes, Rocky and Bullwinkle and various other ‘50s cartoons before them, the animation and palettes constantly keep Minions in bloom, making it endlessly burst with creativity and imagination. The designs are as fluid and flushed as Illumination Entertainment’s created yet, and they sparkle and shine at every moment. One bed story segment in particular, made to look like stop-motion cutouts, is among the best work you’ll see realized in this genre this year.

Minions also furbishes the central characters enough to let them carry out their own film but not completely lose what appealed to people about them before. The central three — Bob, Stuart and Kevin, all voiced by Coffin — get the little twinges of development needed to be the minimalist of personalities, but their culture and language are also retooled enough to make them as understandable enough to follow their erratic behavior through their first solo feature. Their language may be a random collection of French, English, Spanish, Italian and general gibberish phrases, but their emotions and expressions are just human enough to resonate.

While Minions follows the adventures of the central trio sidekicks caught up in the schemes of criminal mastermind Scarlett Overkill (voiced by Sandra Bullock) and her husband Herb (voiced by Jon Hamm) as they attempt to take the Queen’s crown, this spin-off proves the 80-something creatures are best when they’re all together. This is not meant to be the message of the movie — if fact, there may not even be a message here to gleam — but rather what you learn after spending an extended period of time with these illusive beings.

Whether they're collectively singing a rendition of “Make Them Laugh” or finding their way across the surprisingly short distance between Australia and India, for whatever reason there's something unusually hysterical about these unison of off-the-cuff creatures working together in unabashedly earnest unison. As weird as it is to say, Minions gets worse when it gets too caught up in the actual plot. The best moments are just the random oddities it creates at the spur of any moment, just like the characters' moments were in their first two big-screen appearances.

While these corporate cash grabs can quickly become irksome, there’s enough goodwill in here to make the whole unnecessary adventure fun. Like Magic Mike XXL last week, Minions is a sugary, hyperactive summer treat. To make sense of the madness is to lose sight of the inventive, fast-paced energy in ramped motion in this vortex of a family picture. It’s brash, loud and quite incessant, yet also weirdly better than it really has any right to be. Both a guilty pleasure of sorts and a deliriously captured look at pulsed rhythm, this latest adventure is just gooey and loopy enough to hold you captive.