What I’m watching: a pair of new animated features

Date: 7/11/2022

In theaters: “Minions: The Rise of Gru”

As lifelong animation fan, I know the incredible potential for storytelling the medium has, but I will quickly admit that I love the comedy that cartoons can present. I’m please to say the new sequel to “Despicable Me” is a winner, a film with a lot of laughs suitable for the entire family.

The premise is simple. Our villain we love, Gru, is 12 years old and it’s the 1970s. He idolizes a group of evildoers called the Vicious Six who are attempting to find an ancient Chinese medal that allows the wearer to access powers represented by astrological signs. They do indeed find it, but lose it to Gru himself.

Gru is attempting to be recruited into the group and they dismiss his efforts until he steals the medal from under their noses. The rest of the film is a long chase as the Vicious Six attempts to recover it.

The pacing is fast and the gags are even faster. Naturally, Gru’s effort are aided and stymied by the Minions, who I continue to find to be one of the most brilliantly conceived animated characters in the history of the medium.

The story takes Gru to San Francisco in time for the Chinese New Year and the filmmakers use this sequence to have a kung fu comedy feel straight out of Jackie Chan’s early Hong Kong movies. I delighted in the fact that Michelle Yeoh – what a year she is having – is cast as the voice of the martial arts master attempting to teach the Minions some skills.

Yeoh is not the only stellar voice actor in the cast, as Julie Andrews returns as Gru’s mom and Alan Arkin plays a member of the Vicious Six who befriends Gru. Listen closely and you’ll hear Taraji P. Henson, Danny Trejo, Dolph Lundgren, Lucy Lawless and Russell Brand.
Pierre Coffin, the co-director of the series, returns as all of the Minion’s voices.

My wife and my 9-year-old grandson loved the film as well, a rarity among animated features that there is something for everyone.

Streaming on Paramount+: “Beavis and Butthead do the Universe”

I’m assuming we are in some sort of nostalgic craze for the 1990s as Paramount bigwigs greenlit a new Beavis and Butthead movie. I have to say this feature is a hard-edged piece of satire that may be even edgier than the original series as well as the 1996 feature film, “Beavis and Butthead Do America.”

The two morons continue to blissfully walk through life without learning something, completely absorbed by immature sexual cravings and steadfastly putting their needs above anyone else they might encounter.

The joke is we want to see them get a come-uppance. We want to see them receive the harm they have dished out to many others. And the punch line is we never see it.

Instead of going to prison for the destruction they caused at their high school science fair, the boys are deemed to be misunderstood and instead are sent to NASA space camp in an effort to redirect their interest and energy. Naturally, the boys are seen as some sort of enthusiastic participants and are actually brought into space to a mission to the International Space Station.

All they are obsessed with is having sex with the mission leader.

From there things get complicated. The boys go though a wormhole and they come out in 2022, a concept they barely grasp. Their actions have now put all of the multi-verses in jeopardy, meaning the end of reality as we know it.

The movie has the same animated style as the original MTV shows, which is sort of an interesting choice, but one I approve. With all of the computer 3-D renderings it’s refreshing for sees something that looks like a hand-animated cartoon.

Let me emphasize, this is not for kids.