From Sunset Boulevard to The Artist, from Singin’ in the Rain to Babylon, Hollywood’s transition to sound cinema has long been a fertile period for later film artists to recreate with more advanced tools at their disposal. And that proves most delightfully and improbably to the Minions as well. The frenetic antics of Illumination’s mascots, the yellow thugs, are always inspired by vintage slapstick. So in the creatures’ third joint solo feature, director, screenwriter, and voice actor Pierre Coffin makes his influences official, explicitly quoting Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and more throughout his adventures, and We see the minions logically become silent comedy stars for the first time–“logically,” of course, is a relative term in this world of goofy storytelling–only for their trademark gibberish to ruin the dream.
The result is the clear culmination of a series that’s been running for 19 years, whether it’s for the critical die-hard fans, or indeed for whatever it is worth targeting to viewers who were barely alive when 2015’s “Minions” was released. It’s a Minions movie with an actual idea at its core that goes beyond the general merry chaos, proving that the pill-shaped demon works more as a star than a sidekick. 2022’s Minions: The Rise of Gru felt like a step back, cementing them once again as the overlords of Despicable Me. They’re most interesting when they swarm the screen to the exclusion of everything else, like the 11th plague so unholy that it’s not mentioned in the Bible. The new movie does a great job on that front. Young children will be laughing and quoting incoherently from this movie for weeks, and their parents may even chuckle at the memory.
“Minions and Monsters” is also the first feature-length film in the series and the one directed by Frenchman Coffin. Coffin was a co-creator of Minions in the first place and still voices every single one of them. It is a unique dialect that blends infantile chatter with the pidgins of several European languages, creating an effect that is often unparsable but strangely understandable. (Certain interjections stand out: “Bellissima!” is one of them, and “Moviosa!” is another. If this movie can make generations of young children shout “Moviosa!” at random intervals, it will have done more for the culture than most of this summer’s blockbusters.)
Either way, Coffin’s creative leadership appears to be making the difference. Particularly in the first half, the film feels refreshingly undirected and free from studio templates, as it rampages through cinephile-specific sight gags and freestyle plotting that sometimes nestles a movie within a movie. Following opening titles that deftly rewind vintage Universal Studios to the 1920s, as a Universal tour guide (voiced by Allison Janney) parades a gaggle of astounded children and parents through the studio’s memorabilia gallery, we begin with an amusing, if somewhat unrelated, framing device and arrive at the story of two mischievous Minions, James and Henry, inspired by a very good George Lucas joke. Can you believe it, pioneer of Hollywood filmmaking?
Flashing back to their stories, the two were set apart from the horde early on by their shared rebellious nature (which turned out to be too anarchic even for brothers) and a devoted kinship in which all subsequent misdeeds were underpinned by genuine kindness. They develop a bond as they navigate the world in search of their villainous masters, whom they serve and accidentally kill in PG-rated, uproariously comical ways. Somehow, the good but very gruesome violence in these films is always a surprise and a bit of a tonic. (Decapitation is a real scream, but so is death by prehistoric Lego blocks carved from stone and painfully stepped on.)
The Minions’ journey eventually leads them by chance to Old Hollywood, where they unwittingly sabotage the filming of a Roy Rogers-style Western — a breathtaking, galloping action sequence that somehow shifts gears from a frenzied desert horse chase to a runaway train disaster movie, becoming a coup d’etat in its own right. The film’s director, the straight-laced Euro expatriate Max (Christoph Waltz), is initially furious at the takeover of the set, but Fat Cat’s bosses at the studio (both voiced by Jeff Bridges) like the free results. The Minions become overnight sensations on the silver screen, starring in numerous hastily produced silent comedies and genre films, and living large in vast mansions swindled at studio expense.
This is where both the storytelling and the sustained solid gold humor are the richest parts of the film, filled with loving movie references (“Modern Times,” “Safe Last!” and the anachronistic “Citizen Kane” are among the classics that receive the pastiche treatment) and minute-long visual jokes. (My favorite is a passing poster for a Minions thriller titled “Look Behind You, and then Down.”) Some wish we could see a little more of the Minions’ time as movie stars. Because when a wholesome movie collapses the industry and we hear about creatures we don’t understand, “Minions & Monsters” would rather lose momentum.
Splitting up the group and imposing most of them on the dastardly robot Dort (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) yields inconsistent comic payoffs. A sketchy romantic subplot pairing Dort with strong-willed suffragist Debbie (Zoey Deutch) suggests adult involvement that should have been left in the first draft. The dream of James directing a Universal monster movie himself is a much more appealing possibility, but James’ execution of literally summoning a destructive beast through movie magic brings more mayhem than wit. The movie feels more like, well, another Minions movie than a movie buff’s playground, as the Minions build up to a frenzied world-saving battle against the forces of evil they’re ultimately more interested in defeating than participating in.
Of course, that’s what people want, and “Minions & Monsters” delivers it with gusto and a cartoonish grin that’s infectious. And while it ultimately follows convention, the film is such a bizarre and purposeful piece of mass entertainment for much of its (thankfully lighthearted) running time that it holds its favor: It’s almost Bellissima, but it’s totally, madly Mobiosa, and it’s more than it has any right to be the seventh installment of any animated series.
