Best Buy’s Movie Mode app isn’t the terror I thought it would be (at least not yet)

For the most part, the translations are so straightforward that -- as is the case throughout the movie -- it’s clear from their actions onscreen what the Minions are communicating. There were a couple of lines that were very funny and could not have been predicted, and there were a few amusing references to The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, including one suggesting that it was playing in the screening room next door... which, even if it wasn’t, it could well have been. (It’s easy to see how those snippets -- or any of the translated dialogue, really -- could be tailored from week to week depending on what’s hot at the movies. If you use the app this weekend, I’d be curious to hear if you got Twilight jokes or, perhaps, Inception jokes instead.)

The main conundrum I’m left with after using Movie Mode is this: How does it work. Best Buy’s site for the app is suspiciously quiet on this matter, and I couldn’t find anything about it online. The friends I attended the movie with and I figured the app must listen for sound cues in the film to know when to start up. But there’s something just a little creepy about that, that an app could pick up ambient sounds and react to them.

If you want to try out Movie Mode for yourself, a word of warning: it works only with the 3D version of Despicable Me.

(Oh, and that’s Bob, above -- he’s the Minion I created at the film’s official site. It kept me amused for a whole five minutes!)