When alleged supervillain Gru (Steve Carell) dabbled in parenthood in Illumination's Despicable Me in 2010, a franchise was launched. director Kyle Balda's Minions: The Rise of Gru, which also acts as the follow-up to the first Despicable Me prequel, gives Gru something of an origin tale 12 years later. The 2015 release of Minions was an unexpected box office success, making it the second-highest-grossing animated film of all time at the time. The Rise of Gru has been significantly delayed by pandemics, but it has now finally been released. The audiences it was intended for will ultimately decide whether it was worth the wait, but it is undeniable that this is a sequel that manages to outperform the original.

The Rise of Gru, which picks up some time after Minions, begins without either of its title characters but with the Vicious 6 instead. leader Wild Knuckles (Alan Arkin) suffers a severe setback when his apparent second, Belle Bottom (Taraji P. Henson), mounts a coup and seizes power after the group has successfully stolen a potent stone. Gru, an ambitious supervillain, is happy to be invited to an interview for a position with the Vicious 6, which has just become available. When Belle Bottom laughs at Gru instead of helping him, things take a sharp turn for the worse. Gru throws aside the assistance of his devoted Minions and leaves to pursue his goal. Gru steals the stone as retaliation in an effort to establish his villainous nature.

The fact that the first Minions highlighted how the eponymous yellow characters weren't the best option to lead their own full film is one of the film's biggest problems. When they appeared in Despicable Me as sidekicks, their exuberant antics and nonsensical speech (made up of several real languages) were hilarious, but they made a solo film less interesting. In order to get around this, Carell's pointy-nosed Gru is featured in Minions: The Rise of Gru. The Rise of Gru is a more well-rounded film thanks to screenwriter Matthew Fogel's decision to include a plot line unrelated to what the Minions are doing. This is more similar to Despicable Me 0.5 than Minions 2, due to the increased emphasis on Gru.

The mythos of the creatures isn't significantly altered in Minions: The Rise of Gru, which instead mostly focuses the attention on the same three Minions who starred in the previous movie. Otto, a keen but illiterate Minion with braces who ultimately plays a crucial role in the story regarding the stolen stone, is the only significant new addition here. Coffin hasn't lost his knack for giving each each character its distinct personality and voice despite having voiced many Minions over the years in a variety of movies. There is little doubt that Coffin's vocal performance is one of the reasons the Minions have survived for so long, though the animators also deserve credit for this.