What’s It About
In the 1920s, the Minions aim to find monsters to cast in their monster movie. They later band together to save the day after unleashing monsters upon an unsuspecting world.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
“Minions & Monsters” is the third movie built just for them, and it takes the little guys somewhere new: the early days of Hollywood, back when movies didn’t even have sound yet. The story starts the way most Minion stories start, with the gang looking for a new evil boss to serve. Along the way, they run into a Cyclops, a French ruler who gets more than he asked for, and even a run-in with a mummy. None of that sticks. What sticks is when the group lands in 1920s Hollywood and mistakes a movie set for the real thing. They think they’ve found an outlaw to work for, but really, they’ve just wandered onto a Western being filmed. A director named Max, voiced by Christoph Waltz, notices them, and just like that, the Minions become movie stars. Their fame doesn’t last forever, because sound comes to the movies, and the Minions can only speak gibberish. But one of them, a Minion named James, catches the movie-making bug for himself. He wants to direct. He wants to tell his own story instead of just following somebody else’s orders, which for a Minion is actually a pretty big deal. James teams up with a green, tentacled creature named Goomi, voiced by Trey Parker, who helps him track down real monsters to star in his own film. Getting the monsters is the easy part. Keeping them under control turns into a whole different problem. Director Pierre Coffin, who also does every single Minion voice himself, clearly grew up loving old movies, and it shows in almost every scene. There’s a chase sequence early on that plays like something straight out of the silent film era, packed with little tributes to comedy legends like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Charlie Chaplin gets the most screen time out of anybody, with a whole bit built around his famous factory scene from “Modern Times.” Once the movie moves into the talkies era, it starts poking fun at classics like “Citizen Kane” and “To Have and Have Not,” and it does it with more wit than you’d expect from a kids’ movie about banana-loving blobs. What makes “Minions & Monsters” stand out from the rest of the franchise is that it actually has something on its mind. It’s not just noise and slapstick for ninety minutes, even though there’s still plenty of that. The whole movie is built around one simple idea: there is something special about sitting in a dark theater with other people and watching a story unfold together. Sure, that message is basically preaching to people who already bought a ticket. But it works anyway, because the movie earns it. James wants to be seen as an artist and not just as muscle for a villain, and that’s a message that lands even with all the chaos happening around it. Old Hollywood was never an easy place for outsiders to break in and be taken seriously as storytellers, and there’s something honest about watching this odd little character fight for a seat at that table, even if the film never says it outright. As well as bringing the character to life, Jeff Bridges does a fantastic job in his role as one of the studio bosses; he steals almost all his scenes simply because of how he plays the character and by being himself. The other cast members also did an amazing job, but the way Jeff Bridges, played by Jesse Eisenberg, and Zoey Deutch as the suffragette in his subplot just fits in so perfectly with the other characters; you wouldn’t have thought otherwise. The rest of the cast is made up of Allison Janney, who, once again, is fantastic, played a different role as if she was the tour guide in a museum or art gallery. The film definitely has an old-fashioned feel to it right from the start and continues to do so. If there’s a real weakness here, it’s pacing. The first half, built around the Minions taking over silent Hollywood, is sharper and funnier than the back half, once the monster movie plot takes over. Once Max fades into the background, the film loses a little bit of its footing before finding its way back for the ending. It’s not enough to sink the movie, but it does mean the back stretch feels like a slight step down from everything that came before it. Even with that dip, “Minions & Monsters” might be the strongest movie in this franchise since the very first “Despicable Me” came out back in 2010. It takes real risk by stepping away from familiar faces like Kevin, Stuart, and Bob, and it uses that risk to actually grow the world instead of just repeating the same jokes on a loop. James stands out as one of the better characters this franchise has produced, mostly because he wants something real: not power, not a boss to serve, just the chance to make something of his own. Kids will laugh at the pratfalls and the gibberish, same as always. Adults who grew up loving old movies will get a whole different layer of jokes running underneath. That’s a hard trick to pull off, and “Minions & Monsters” mostly pulls it off. It’s silly, it’s a little messy in the back half, and it’s also sneaky smart about what it’s really trying to say about art and who gets to make it. Sixteen years into this franchise, that’s not a bad place for the Minions to land.
OUR RATING – A BIG YELLOW 7.5