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Cackle

Some UK cinemas have banned groups of young people wearing suits during screenings of Minions: The Rise of Gru.

The decision came after some young moviegoers were criticised for rowdy behaviour after a viral trend erupted on the social media app TikTok.

The trend involves large groups of teenage boys, who call themselves The Gentleminions, filming themselves going to watch the latest instalment in the Despicable Me franchise dressed in suits.

The movie is panned in the reviews. So, how do you get folk to go watch it? Create something viral which works off the standard human crowd behaviour lark.

Somewhere out there there’s a PR bod awaiting a very large bonus this year.

23 thoughts on “Cackle”

  1. I’ve been to screenings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and loads of people were dressed up in costume and everyone was singing along. What’s wrong with some enthusiasm whilst watching a film.

  2. SBML, indeed. I attended one such sing-a-long Rocky Horror Picture Show some years ago. Great fun.

  3. Context is probably appropriate here. The minions thing is aimed at kids, and this gentleminion stuff is spoiling it for them. I can imagine the original audience for TRHPS splitting into two – the WTF?? brigade and those who totally get it. The latter carrying on to be participants at showings along with a few WTF??s new to it.

  4. The Pedant-General

    Tractor Gent,

    Context almost certainly appropriate here. Some Gentleminions I’m sure are gentleminionly, but there are stories of some throwing their bananas (because of course they have to have bananas) at the screen etc.

  5. As soon as fifty something men start rocking the no jacket/no tie, sure as eggs is eggs young men are going to do the opposite. I expect more of this.

  6. More precisely, main-stream media reviews praised Lightyear with its lesbian kiss scene and dismissed Minions which doesn’t feature any such propaganda. Family-friendly Minions is making money hand-over-fist whilst Lightyear is likely to lose tens of millions.

  7. ‘The movie is panned in the reviews’.

    Which explains why it is a huge box office success.

    In the US there are no reports of rowdiness in cinemas. Perhaps just the usual UK media making summat out of nowt.

  8. I thought that the first Minions film was bloody funny.

    There was a phenomenon many years ago when Mommy Dearest with Faye Dunawaywith was on. People had to be searched at cinemas in the US because they were taking coat hangers in an wavng them about.

  9. Panned by critics

    But 91% positive user rating on Rotten Tomatoes

    To amplify on Wat Dabney’s observation:-
    Opening weekend in the US for Gru grossed $125 million in contrast to the woke “Lightyear” from the far more successful Toy Story franchise which generated a mere $50m and is unlikely to recover its costs.

  10. Who doesn’t like Minions?

    Good to hear of youngsters suiting up. As a not-youngster whose standards of dress have fallen due to WFH bloat and the decline of face to face meetings, I am glad someone is dressing properly.

  11. I subscribed to Disney+ streaming for the grand-kids when it was initially launched. More recently I was happy to let that expire as the quality of the content has become absolutely dismal. Truly some of the stupidest, laziest shit you can imagine. And now with their woke and child-grooming propaganda featuring ever more prominently we’re at the stage where I would actually pay to keep that nest of perverts’ programming out of the house. Well done Disney.

  12. Which explains why it is a huge box office success.

    Maybe this yobbos-in-suits thing is actually negative PR started to discourage viewers.

  13. One independent cinema in Wadebridge, Cornwall, has banned any unaccompanied children who are wearing suits from watching the film

    Quite right, suits are a gateway drug to cummerbunds.

  14. On a related note, cinematically, my wife and I went to see Top Gun Maverick last night.
    What a bag of shite.

  15. Interested: Were you surprised? It is so very rare that sequels are as good as or better than the original, and this is in spades for reboots from the grave. I’ve pretty much given up on cinema-going. The few that I might have watched I’m quite happy to wait for when they come round on the TV. Some of the more interesting stuff is niche anyway so I’ll only ever see it on Film4 as I’m not close enough to the funny little cinemas in London that show that kind of stuff.

  16. @Interested
    my wife and I went to see Top Gun Maverick last night.
    What a bag of shite.

    Thank you for that concise criticism. I’m happy that I shall not be bothering to watch it.

    I was not impressed by the original movie, the flying sequences were fine (if you ignored the typical USian “combat” shouting and screaming) but the rest of it…meh. Some half century or so ago I was involved in running a British Top Gun-equivalent outfit and Cruise, had he been one of my students he would have been, in the parlance, chopped.

  17. Went to see it last Saturday with my boys, lots of shouting and singing and a good time being had by the youngsters. I quite enjoyed the movie also. Larks and hoots by the young-timers, never really seen anything like it before in the cinema, you might call it ‘audience paricipation’, the whole thing – the movie and the antics left me with a happy feeling, keep it up kids.

  18. “On a related note, cinematically, my wife and I went to see Top Gun Maverick last night.
    What a bag of shite.”

    Thank Christ for that, I’m not the only person who thought it was an utter turkey. Its wasn’t so much a film as a mish mash of largely unrelated scenes all mashed together, largely so Tom Cruise could grin into the camera. The characterisation was laughable, the story line had more holes than a bachelors underpants and the ‘USA!Rah Rah Rah!’ stuff was pathetic. Add in the ubiquitous woke characters (of COURSE the pilots chosen to fly the mission had include a woman, a black guy and an Hispanic guy, the only surprising thing was none of them were trans. Having said that maybe ‘Bob’ is……) and the fact that [spoiler alert] not one pilot failed to return from a so called ‘suicide mission’ and you’ve got a film that is about as interesting as watching paint dry.

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