Minions: The Rise of Gru

The Yellow Id of the Seventies

There is a particular, high-frequency chaos that defines the *Minions* films, a kind of relentless, bouncy physics that feels less like animation and more like a sugar rush captured on digital film. When I sat down to watch *The Rise of Gru*, I wasn’t expecting to find much beyond the usual slapstick, but there’s a surprisingly sturdy framework here. Set in the 1970s—a decade defined by a collision of funk, disco, and cultural disorientation—the film uses its period setting not just for groovy aesthetic choices, but to mirror the absurdity of its protagonists.



Director Kyle Balda leans into the decade’s cartoonish excess with an enthusiasm that’s almost infectious. The Vicious 6—the film's cadre of antagonists—are styled with the exaggerated swagger of Blaxploitation icons, all wide lapels and questionable mustaches. It’s a smart shorthand. *Variety’s* Owen Gleiberman once noted that these creatures essentially function as "humanity's id," and placing that id inside a decade that was already indulging its own excesses feels like the right kind of creative math. The film doesn't laboriously explain the 70s; it just vibrates with them.

What saves the movie from becoming merely a collection of frantic gags is the unexpected, gravelly warmth provided by Alan Arkin as Wild Knuckles. We know the late actor for roles that required a certain prickly, intellectual sharpness—think of his turn in *Little Miss Sunshine*—but here, his voice work acts as an anchor. He plays a retired supervillain who accidentally becomes a mentor to a young, aspiring Gru. There’s a weariness in his delivery, a sense that he’s seen the game of "evil" played out to its boring conclusion.



I was struck by how little Arkin pushes for the "bad guy" archetype. Instead, he treats the mentorship with a strange, quiet dignity. When Gru, voiced by Steve Carell with the same endearing, nasal earnestness we’ve come to know, fumbles through his first attempts at villainy, Arkin doesn’t play the hardened veteran. He plays a lonely man who recognizes a kindred, outcast spirit. It’s a small, human touch in a film that is otherwise defined by the physics of falling anvils and squishy, yellow anatomy.

The scene that lingered with me involved a simple Kung Fu training montage. It’s a sequence that, in lesser hands, would have been a fast-paced blur. But here, the editing slows down just enough to let us see the friction between the Minions' incompetence and their genuine desire to please. You watch the way the character Kevin tries to mimic a movement, his stubby little limbs failing to find the right arc, and it’s not just a joke about clumsiness. It’s a moment of profound, wordless patience.



Whether that’s intentional or just a byproduct of high-end character rigging, I’m not entirely sure. It probably doesn't matter. The film works because it doesn't apologize for its own silliness. There are stretches where the plot feels like it’s running on fumes—where the logic of the heist takes over and the emotional stakes get pushed to the background—but it always pulls itself back to the central relationship between the boy and his henchmen. It’s a movie about the desperate need to belong, even if that means joining a club of supervillains. Perhaps that’s a universal feeling, even if we usually express it in less explosive ways.