Long before he ran a lair full of grown henchmen, Gru was a twelve-year-old kid with a supervillain scrapbook and a group of small yellow helpers who believed in him anyway.
What is Minions: The Rise of Gru about?
Minions: The Rise of Gru drops back into the 1970s to follow young Gru as he chases a single-minded dream: joining the world's most notorious league of supervillains, the Vicious 6. His scheme to prove himself pulls his loyal Minions into a chaotic plan involving the group's ranks and a prized stone the Vicious 6 will do almost anything to recover. Rather than treating the Minions as background gags, the film builds the story around their devotion to a boy nobody else takes seriously, tracking how an odd, undersized crew becomes the backbone of a future criminal empire. It sits in the wider Despicable Me franchise as an origin chapter, filling in how Gru's ambitions and his bond with the Minions first took shape, well before the family and gadgets audiences know from later entries.
About the cast
Steve Carell returns as the voice of young Gru, joined by Pierre Coffin voicing the Minions themselves, alongside Russell Brand, Alan Arkin, Taraji P. Henson, and a supervillain lineup that includes Jean-Claude Van Damme, Lucy Lawless, and Dolph Lundgren rounding out the Vicious 6.
Context & significance
Directed by Kyle Balda, the film is a France-Japan-United States co-production and the fifth installment in the Despicable Me series, extending a franchise built on the Minions' crossover popularity with younger audiences. Its period setting in the 1970s gives the production a distinct visual and musical backdrop compared with the present-day look of the earlier films in the series.
Watching Minions: The Rise of Gru on Ktime
Minions: The Rise of Gru is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, letting families choose a fully Farsi viewing experience or the original English performances with Farsi text on screen. Streaming it requires only a free K-Time account login, with no separate charge to browse the catalogue, and the whole site is built around a Farsi interface for Persian-speaking households abroad.