Minions and Monsters review: A rare franchise outing that almost ticks every box
The third in the Minions series and seventh in the overall Despicable Me franchise (in which the minions first appear), Minions and Monsters has countless memorable moments spread across its crisp runtime as director and co-writer Pierre Coffin dials back the clock to lead the audience into the glorious silent movie era of the 1920s.
A scene from Minions and Monsters.
The Minions have always been besotted by the world’s deadliest and most flamboyant villains, but what if they (at least some of them) were to discover the villainous of them all — human ambition? This enticing central idea becomes the guiding force for director and co-writer Pierre Coffin, who dials back the clock in Minions and Monsters to handhold us into the glorious silent movie era of the 1920s.
Although the title barely suggests any romanticism on the makers’ part, the latest film — the third in the Minions series and seventh in the overall Despicable Me franchise (in which the minions first appear) — features many gleeful hat-tips to the said bygone era. Surely, the myriad references and the culture rendered (beautifully by the animation team of Illumination) in the 90-minute exhibition are going to alienate the franchise’s core audience. But just as the characters from the ‘20s seem unfazed by the sudden emergence of the minuscule, yellowed creatures, today’s viewer too will acknowledge the collision of worlds with the least suspicion. It isn’t about initiation in Minions and Monsters so much as it is letting chaos assume its familiar, unruly shape.
The fact that the OG trio of Kevin, Steve and Bob aren’t part of the main narrative doesn’t impact the experience either. A Minion tribe different from the trio’s comes to the fore in this case, with two of them in particular, James and Henry (named aptly to be John Ford’s cowboys someday), becoming the bumbling protagonists. James is a wide-eyed, daydreamer of an artist who is a misfit for the conventional setting around him. It is only Henry who gets him and, more importantly, adores him for who he is, and the crux of the story is this sweet, tender friendship between them.
Changing history of cinema
Why James, Henry and co. come to be part of the Hollywood of the 1920s isn’t really a matter of curiosity, given the tribe’s nomadic nature and the franchise’s own outlandish ways of going about things. Let’s just say the tribe feverishly pursues a thieving outlaw as its next ‘Big Boss’ and somehow lands on a movie set in Los Angeles, which is being helmed by German émigré director Max (voiced by Christoph Waltz). Max is to show his dailies to the studio moguls, Bright Brothers (both voiced by Jeff Bridges) of Bright Brothers Pictures, and when the impersonal duo spots Minions’ unsolicited presence in footage shot earlier that day, they can’t help but feel overjoyed by the prospects now shimmering before them. The history of cinema is about to be changed and the minions, of all, will be the face of it!
Coffin and his co-writer Bryan Lynch are evidently fans of the time period they establish in the new film. If the opening credits evoke the styles of the Lumière Brothers, George Méliès and others, plenty of other Easter eggs are laid out over the next 45 minutes or so in the form of homages to the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Humphrey Bogart. And just as Damien Chazelle’s misunderstood epic Babylon (2022) chronicles the upheaval of the silent era as spoken dialogue arrives to transform cinema, the Minions, too, discover that their Achilles heel is nothing but speaking on camera — speaking English on camera, to be precise. So much for James’ dreams of winning an Oscar for best director one day.
Creative and satisfying adventure
Minions and Monsters is rather adventurous to use this as the premise for a kid-friendly animation movie and to its credit, it does a mighty fine job in exploring the many nuances of the world it inhabits. It does so through deliriously absurd gags and broad comedy that arrive at a breakneck speed at us, and for a good part of the proceedings, the film feels like a refreshing rarity given the current consumerist approach of moviemaking. However, one ends up wishing for a bit too much with a movie vehicle that is well aware of its boundaries. While Coffin and Lynch do manage to venture into the personal and make James an unconventional protagonist, they decide after a point to simply put the story arc aside and focus on what everyone’s there for: the theatrics, the acrobatic inventiveness and, in general, the mindless fun. You can’t blame them, can you?
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The story then welcomes the monsters promised by the title and a book of evil becomes the source of entertainment from there on. Destruction-hungry creatures, coming in all sizes and shapes, enter the fray, and much of the second half of the film is about the larger-than-life comedy-action routines unfolding between the two sides. The contrivances are extraordinary in showcasing the quality of the animation, yet their repeated use never quite matches the first half’s infectious charm. Another subplot involving an alien robot named Dort (Jessie Eisenberg), dispatched to conquer Earth but inadvertently embraced by the Minions as their chosen hero — or villain — before falling in love with a women’s rights activist, teases a delicious narrative subversion. But it, too, gets slightly lost in the film’s overcrowded sprawl.
Minions and Monsters, nevertheless, has countless memorable moments spread across its crisp runtime. Whether it’s a George Lucas cameo, a (1941 film) The Maltese Falcon-inspired noir sequence, a loving recreation of a Citizen Kane (1941 drama) scene, or a floaty car ride inside the body of a gigantic orange blancmange creature, the film packs so much in that even the few shortcomings don’t register as much. It’s easily the most creative and satisfying adventure of the series so far and promising enough to raise expectations for the instalments to come.
