At last, they made a Minions movie just for me. Maybe not for you or for your kid, but for me and the other film-school graduates in the crowd. You may argue that the yellow beings (all voiced by Pierre Coffin) have been the real stars ever since their debut in Despicable Me. Now they’ve finally proved it with a film called Minions & Monsters that improves on their previous starring turns by dipping judiciously into the well of movie references.
After an overly long framing story and prologue sequence, the Minions wash up in Hollywood in the 1920s and become silent-film stars working with a diminutive director named Max (voiced by Christoph Waltz). Unfortunately, the advent of sound film ruins their careers as actors because audiences can’t understand their language, so while the bulk of the Minions go off looking for another supervillain to serve, three of them named James, Henry, and Ed split off to obtain studio financing so they can make their own science-fiction monster movie.
Turning the Minions loose in early-era Tinseltown allows for all sorts of references to vintage movies. Their intrusion onto the set of Max’s train-robbery film is an extended riff on The General, where they’re chased not by incompetent police officers but by actual Keystone Kops. They ignite a chain of destruction on animated versions of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd. Later, their attempts to shoot movies in sound pay tribute to The Maltese Falcon and Citizen Kane.
The film fares less well once its plot branches off. The Minions wind up working for an alien robot named Dort (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) who claims to have traveled to Earth to destroy humanity. While the movie has some fun playing with the idea of whether he is what he says he is or just some street entertainer who’s gone too far into character, this plot doesn’t come to life until it rejoins the other plot. That involves James, Henry, and Ed using a book of magic spells to conjure a green tentacled monster (voiced by South Park’s Trey Parker). They’re disappointed when they find the monster is only half the size of the Minions, but the little monster promises to lead them to bigger, scarier colleagues, and only Henry is suspicious of their new friend whose name is “Gary the Deceiver.”
With Universal Studios releasing this, you know that corporate synergy will come into play, as the Minions work briefly for a cyclops much like the one in the studio’s upcoming The Odyssey. The framing device set in the present day has a tour guide (voiced by Allison Janney) leading tourists through a movie memorabilia museum exhibit that includes Star Wars director George Lucas, who voices himself as a prisoner being kept in a glass cage.
Even so, Minions & Monsters wisely realizes that the Minions are in large part inspired by those great silent comedies of the past. Their homage to those come off better than most, not to mention being a damn sight cleverer than the movie references in the Scary Movie reboot. If you are the parent of a budding cinephile, this film is a prime opportunity to show them a gateway to those sepia-toned comedians whose century-old gags are still good for a laugh.
Minions & Monsters
Voices by Pierre Coffin and Trey Parker. Directed by Pierre Coffin. Written by Brian Lynch and Pierre Coffin. Rated PG.
