Allow me to take you on a magical journey, one where we travel back in time.

Frozen has not come out yet, and the world has yet to be plagued with cancerous amounts of a singing snowman. It is the year 2010, and Despicable Me has just hit theaters. Despicable Me is fantastic, especially the cute, adorable little minions. They’re just so priceless, I feel I’ll never get sick of them.

Fast forward to 2015. Due to oversaturation of minions toys, candy, memes, and even underwear, minions make me sick. So it’s no surprise that the recently-released-to-DVD movie Minions, based entirely off the little yellow sponges from Despicable Me, does not especially appeal to me. If anything, it just sort of rubs salt in an open wound I’ve been trusting Universal not to dirty. But my trust was repaid with this movie, and I admit I feel kind of betrayed. Then again, when have movies not betrayed my trust for their own profit?

I feel like the best thing I can do about this movie is not tell you about the plot, but I have to. Despite what the indecisive trailers may have led you to believe, it’s not about the minions’ evolution from the dawn of time, it’s just about them looking for an evil mastermind, like Gru from Despicable Me. That is literally the whole plot, and it doesn’t expand or have much more meaning than that.

If you’re a parent or have younger siblings, try listening to the endless story of a three-year-old who just ate a pound of pixie sticks. It would be as if whatever story just exploded out of their mouths was tacked onto a dry and uninteresting plot in the form of slapstick comedy, hoping to make something stick.

Am I being harsh? Perhaps. But this is the kind of movie I have come to despise. Universal has taken something that I once considered precious and adorable and turned it into a money-making machine. The minions have now been stripped of any dignity and sense and have simply been laid before the big screen like a frightened amoeba under a microscope.

In fact, it reminds me a lot of another movie…remember Paul Blart: 2? This movie was heinously bad, and I’m convinced the only reason the producers decided to make it was they wagered that as long as they beat their budget, even if only by twenty bucks, then it would be worth making. Even though Blart made me want to dig my eyes out, the movie seemed to acknowledge it was fairly poisonous to the brain and laughed about it afterwards, like the kid who trips and gets up to laugh with his friends.

In contrast, Minions strikes me as a movie by greedy producers who tried to do the same thing, but instead targeted children instead of the masochists who enjoyed Paul Blart. But perhaps the most frustrating part for me is that despite being awful, Minions was wildly successful and has set numerous records at the box office. Why? Because I’m almost positive that a lot of people who went to see this movie were adults who should know better who instead mindlessly follow the minion craze.

If I’m being generous, I’d give the movie a 3/10. While at least moderately amusing, it falls short as a movie based entirely around comedic characters. If you still like minions, I would highly recommend it, because if you hadn’t guessed, this movie is right up your alley. But if you’re not obsessed and wanted a good movie for your money, this isn’t the place to go.