MINIONS (U)

3 stars

Much like the crackpot penguins were the best thing about the Madagascar movies, so the Minions were always the top draw in the otherwise forgettable Despicable Me and its sequel.

A fairly neat starting point for this animated spin-off imagines the little yellow rascals spending millennia trying to find their perfect supervillain master, taking them through the dinosaurs and Dracula and always managing to inadvertently destroy them along the way.

This is all presented with anarchic glee and no shortage of laughs, but it’s when they eventually find themselves in 1968 that the movie grinds to a halt as the three lead Minions end up on a mission for mega-baddie Scarlet Overkill (voiced by Sandra Bullock) to steal the crown jewels.

You'll be a long time waiting for an actual story to kick in, as Scarlet and the Minions battle for supremacy, and you certainly shouldn’t go looking for characterisation or thematic ambition.

For every flash of inspired lunacy there's five minutes of tedium and a dozen ideas that fall flat, but enjoyed as a series of random gags there’s a reasonable amount of entertainment to be found here.

Directors: Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda

Running time: 91 mins