Underwear

Being with the youngest granddaughters so much, I got to see some children's movies and TV.  One afternoon it was Despicable Me II. I had seen the end of the first one a few years ago in a similar over-the-shoulder fashion. The minions are that great cartoon reality where they can get blown up, incinerated, electrocuted and have entire mountains fall on them and initially appear near-death, only to be fully recovered in the next scene.*

When this song played near the happy ending of the movie, I said out loud "that's a famous song - what is it?' because in the context of it being minions singing in their own language, plus my unfamiliarity with popular culture, I couldn't quite place it. The 11-year old didn't know but said "They're saying underwear." "I don't think so Aurora.  I think it just sounds like that." To a middle-schooler's humor, I thought to myself. Well she was right, suggesting that whoever does the minons' language also has a middle-schooler's humor.

The minions collectively, more than Gru are the main character in the movie. We miss that because no one of them rises to the level of being a main character. They are similar to the early Sesame Street and Muppet Show muppets, before Kermit rose to become a central figure on his own and a few others followed, the 101 Dalmations, or any of the Collective Sidekicks that eventually made the human stars the sidekicks. Gru does drive the plot, but he's not that funny or even that endearing without them. And he is played very, very well in these movies, both the animation and the voicing.

For me it is additionally funny to watch with these three granddaughters, because their father actually does have Gru's accent, being from Transylvania, and they parallel the three little girls in age quite closely.

*As a humorous device it goes back quite a ways, as the same thing happens in Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale." (I think.  I may be confusing two stories into one, so I'll check.)