Seriously not understanding the backlash this movie is getting.

Agree, i absolutely enjoyed it. Pure fun.

Because hipsters come to a movie made for kids and expect inception 2, but even that is too mainstream. Nothing is ever good enough

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Don't like it? Don't watch it.

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There are a lot of people in the world that feel like it's a mark of 'the critical thinker' to go against or buck any trend.

When I was in college, I remember a handful of classes devoting significant time to the concept of 'critical thinking' & it was made clear to students that 'group think' is the opposite of 'critical thinking'.

I get the intent there, no malice or anything, it's an important concept & all - but just as people do, we boil a concept down to the simplest, most easily digestable form & it ends up robbing the idea of what made it worthwhile to begin with.

Critical thinking morphs into being a contrarian just for the sake of it.

Group think morphs into any popular opinion, so a person who wants to believe they are a 'critical thinker' must turn against the tide.

People have a way of ruining things because of their own intellectual laziness.

I think that the backlash has to do with what the sequal lacked that the original had.

The charm of the original was twofold:

1) It was an incredibly focused movie that had a beginning/middle/end and plenty of chuckles throughout the way

2) The minions... they were cute and interesting.



One of the problems with the sequal was the fact that the movie was rather unfocused. It kept juggling between Gru and dating, Gru as the reluctant hero, Gru the parent, Gru trying to find a purpose in his life. Instead of seemlessly tying these events, the movie clunkily transitioned from one to the other. When one scene ended, Gru put on his next hat and dealt with the previously brought upon conflict. I know, I know, that's what movies are... one scene after another that leads to a conclusion. The transitions were just not as crisp as they were in the first movie. The ending kind of brought them all together, but it was rather sloppily done, in my opinion... especailly compared to the original, which was so focused and moved along rather seemlessly (I watched the original with my daughter a few days before watching the sequel)

An example of this was towards the beginning of the movie when the youngest daughter was reciting lines about a mother. It was important, and then a bunch of other stuff happened and it was kind of ignored, then at the end of the movie they call back to it and I thought, "oh yea, that happened earlier, right?". Not much of a payoff because it was pretty much forgotten for an hour. That's something the first movie didn't really do.


Also, the minions were completely overused. The charm of them in the first one was that they would appear at random, but useful, points and do funny things. In the sequal, the directors/producers tried to squeeze them needlessly into every scene possible... and they lost some of their magic.


All of that being said, I thought the movie was perfectly adequate as a kids movie, and rather good for a sequal. IMDB had it rated as a 7.6, Rotten Tomatoes has the average critic rating as a 6.7... I think the movie is right in the middle. It's a 7/10, perfectly adequate kids movie. Not a true standout in the genre, but, there are plenty of worse movies as well.

Just my .02

which backlash exactly are you talking about? this film got very good reviews and made a billion dollars at the box office! I saw part 1 ages ago and liked it, but never got around to this one until multiple people told me it was good...so I finally saw it, and yeah...plenty of laugh out loud moments; a solid 8/10. The only backlash I can imagine are IMDB threads...but if you've been on IMDB for any amount of time, you'll know to take everything you read here with a grain of salt