YMMV / Minions

• Awesome Music: True to being Illumination, the soundtrack includes scads of 60s hits. The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, The Turtles, and even a couple songs from The Beatles, who's music can be very hard to license.
• Base-Breaking Character: The titular minions have cemented themselves in this status. Fans of the Despicable Me movies are either happy to see them get their own movie or annoyed by their excessive presence and for overshadowing the human characters that fans have grown to love.
• Critic-Proof: While the movie has been well-received by the audience and has definitely become a huge box office success, having passed the billion dollar mark outgrossing both Despicable Me films, and becoming the third highest-grossing animated film of all time, it holds a largely mediocre critical reception with a below average 55% on Rotten Tomatoes. Of all the films that have passed the billion dollar mark, only Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, The Lion King (2019), and The Rise of Skywalker have worse critical reception than Minions.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Scarlet and Herb Overkill get a lot of love from the fans of the franchise for their chemistry, villain careers, and personalities. Another reason why Scarlet is popular is because of her orphaned past.
  • The Nelsons likewise due to the fact that, despite being a criminal family, they're nothing but supportive to the Minions through their appearances. Most fans actually wanted more scenes with them.
  • There was a lot of applause when Gru made his appearance. Heck, to most fans, that was arguably the best part of the movie.
• Fanfic Fuel: The prologue shows just a few examples of who Minions served in the past. What other historical figures did they serve as well?
• Genius Bonus: While minion speak is in full effect in this movie, particularly savvy viewers will notice that the language has a bit more gratuitous European hodgepodge thrown in to reflect the mythology of how their language developed. What takes the cake is Stuart's reference to a yellow fire hydrant as Papagena, the female love interest of The Magic Flute by Mozart. Not only was Mozart famously crass like the Minions, but The Magic Flute was famously the most slapstick of Mozart's operas.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: This was the third highest grossing movie of 2015 in Mexico.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Before this film cemented the Minions' popularity in Hype Backlash, they were often praised for stealing the show from Gru's plots in the first two films. In this film, Gru returns the favor with less than two minutes of screen time.
  • In the Honest Trailer for this movie, the narrator says that the movie would've been better if it focused on Young Gru and some Minion babies. Seven years later, the sequel to this movie does just that.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • The freeze ray that is Gru's main weapon turns out to be created by Dr. Nefario.
  • Gru's Benevolent Boss status towards the Minions (to the point of knowing each and every one of them by name) becomes even sweeter when you discover that he's known them since he was a kid, and they're probably the best friends he's ever had.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Through Wolverine Publicity, this film made the already popular minions even more popular (as well as turning their marketing up to eleven), and people who don't like them or are indifferent to them aren't too thrilled.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Prior to its release, fans of the Despicable Me series (especially younger viewers) only wanted to watch the film to see the Minions have their own movie. YMMV on how well this paid off.
  • The film was already set to have a strong opening, but it is often believed that the post-release report that a young Gru would appear at the end brought many previously uninterested viewers into the seats.
  • Many fans admitted that they would rewatch the movie just for the Overkills, who many older fans felt were more interesting and likeable.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Herb Overkill is the laidback, swaggering husband of the world's greatest villain Scarlet, and plays a key role in her years of success with his technological genius. Outfitting Scarlet with every sort of weapon and tool she could ever need, Herb's skills are so useful that he even successfully supplies the Minions with such good gadgets that they pull off a heist for the Overkills handily. Designing Scarlet's coronation dress with defensive and offensive capabilities that save her life and make her a massive threat in the climax, Herb maintains a chill, friendly attitude the whole film, never holding any real malice towards anyone he goes up against, simply working with Scarlet because he loves her and enjoys goofing around.
  • Walter and Madge Nelson are a pair of successful supervillains who raise their children to be as skilled and dangerous as them. Walter and Madge make family trips out of bank robberies and high security museum infiltration, doing such a good job in ripping the places off that even their infant son Binky becomes a deadly villain in no time. Genuinely befriending the Minions and offering them advice in villainy, the Nelsons are the only bad guys who refuse to ally with Scarlet Overkill in hunting the Minions, urging their friends to escape.
• Memetic Mutation: See this film's section on the franchise's meme page.
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • While the Minions canonically work for the evilest and most ruthless organism they can find, the bosses shown are just generic scary or intimidating historical figures and creatures and they're so idiotically incompetent that they bring more pain upon themselves and their masters than other people. This doesn't stop memes that they would have without question worked for the truly despicable men and women throughout history and willingly partook in the worst atrocities known to man, most commonly Adolf Hitler and The Holocaust.
  • Gru also became this once people realized that if the Minions continued to serve him from 1968, he must be worse than every despicable person/group who came after, with Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden being the most commonly brought up.
• Moe: Bob, who plays like the baby brother of the main trio.
• Moral Event Horizon: Scarlet crosses it when she ties up Stuart and Bob above a pile of explosives to lure Kevin out of hiding. And if that isn't evil enough, she tells Bob she's keeping his teddy bear for herself.
• Nightmare Fuel: Scarlet Overkill's Villainous Breakdown after getting crushed by a chandelier during her coronation.
• Signature Scene: For a film that is often said to be okay if not awful, the surprise appearance by a young Gru at the end of the film is often considered to be one of the best moments in the entire series.
• Squick: A Minion in a thong is already a gross image on it’s own, but having to see a backshot of as much? You may need some heavy doses of bleach on your eyes afterwards.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general reception of the movie (especially by critics). They say that while it's not as good as either of the first two films in its franchise or the movies that competed with it in the box office, it's still a decent family film.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Young Gru only appears at the end of the movie. As Honest Trailers put it:
  "Steve Carell is back...at the very end for, like, thirty seconds to remind you how much better this movie would have been with little Gru and some minion babies."
  • Many fans felt that the movie could have been much better if it was a stand alone movie starring either the Overkills or the Nelson family.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The movie really could have gone better if it was a Gru origin story, like he was Scarlet Overkill’s newest apprentice instead of the Minions.
• Unexpected Character: Gru unexpectedly shows up at the end to steal the crown, the minions, and the movie.

---