Several British cinemas have barred teens in suits and ties from watching the latest installment of the “Minions” saga, due to an uproar caused by some young viewers encouraged by a movement on TikTok.
Following the #gentleminions trend, groups of teenagers in suit-ties – imitating the main character, Felonius Gru, and his iconic gesture – disrupted the projections of the film released on Friday in the United Kingdom, filming themselves and posting on social networks videos that they went viral.
“Due to a small number of incidents in our cinemas over the weekend, we had to restrict access to theaters in certain circumstances,” explained a spokesman for the Odeon cinema chain.
The Mallard, the only cinema on the Anglo-Norman island of Guernsey, stopped showing the film due to “incredibly incorrect behaviour” by some groups.
The director of the cinema, Daniel Phillips Smith, explained to the BBC that these young moviegoers had “said bad words, thrown objects” and had fought with other spectators during the sessions.
This animated film, which the production company Universal delayed two years due to the pandemic, explores the origins of the main character of the franchise that, since the first installment -“Me, ugly and bad”, in 2010- raised 3,700 million dollars at the box office, according to the specialized site IMDB, not counting the many derivative products.
Released on Friday in the United States, United Kingdom and China, the film goes back to the beginning of Gru, the failed villain of this saga who, as a teenager and surrounded by an army of “Minions”, seeks to integrate into a group of bad guys: the Vicious 6.
For its part, Universal approved of the outpouring of youngsters, tweeting: “To all who show up to @Minions in suits: We see you and love you.”
