Minions & Monsters Review: A Hilarious Love Letter To Cinema

Minions & Monsters entertains with its cinematic nostalgia baits, even if it never quite escapes the franchise’s familiar storytelling flaws, remarks Sreeju Sudhakaran.

Minions are delightful, alright.

You must be someone who has never experienced joy to not feel at least slightly amused by their antics as they try to serve the baddest boss they can find, invariably with disastrous consequences, or by their gibberish that randomly throws together words from different languages.

Or how, when they say ‘Thank you’, it almost sounds like ‘F**k you’!

IMHO, though, their slapstick craziness works best in shorts spurts, much like the classic cartoons of Tom & Jerry or Road Runner. Their comic interludes are often the funniest parts of the Despicable Me series, much like Scrat’s eternal pursuit of his acorn in the Ice Age movies.

Beyond the Despicable Me films, the Minions have now got three movies centred around them.

While they continue to be funny and these films keep minting money at the box office, the yellow critters still lack the main character energy needed to sustain a feature.

The films built around them struggle to deliver a compelling emotional arc that goes beyond making you laugh every few minutes. Minions & Monsters, despite starting on a very promising note and cruising along smoothly for quite a while, ultimately suffers from the same problem.

Hollywood’s Golden Age Adventure Through Minions

The main events of the Minions threequel are set long before the first Minions movie, this time showing how they crashed Hollywood in 1927 and accidentally saved cinema. It is such a exciting premise that even adults can have a blast, especially those with some knowledge of classic cinema who can spot the references and Easter eggs.

Minions & Monstersbegins with a present-day studio tour guide narrating the story of how two Minions, James and Henry, saved Hollywood, explaining why their statues have been immortalised on the studio lot.

Even before that tale begins, the opening sequence is loaded with fun nods to films like The Matrix and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, while also slipping in a delightful cameo by George Lucas. Look closely and you will even spot Orson Welles lurking in the corner of one scene.

The flashback begins with the Minion horde continuing its endless search for the most evil master possible.

Their journey sees them inadvertently eliminating one villain after another, from Cyclops to a mummy to an evil wizard, before they literally crash into Hollywood during the golden age of silent cinema.

Blink during one chase scene, where they think they have spotted their next master, and you’ll miss hilarious recreations of iconic moments from films like The Great Train Robbery, Modern Times and Safety Last!.

Even the Minions’ introductory montage is a comical tribute to the birth of cinema, inserting them into landmarks like The Horse in Motion, L’Arroseur Arrosé and A Trip To The Moon, among others.

I never thought a Minions movie would provide such a delightful trip down memory lane for cinephiles, celebrating both the origins of cinema and Hollywood’s silent era.

Minions Rule The Silent Era

Anyway, back to the plot.

The Minions catch the attention of the Bright Brothers (both voiced by Jeff Bridges), two Hollywood producers, after accidentally ruining one of their productions.

Instead of being angry, the brothers coerce their director, Max (Christoph Waltz), to cast the Minions in his movies. The Minions become overnight sensations, with their films making a fortune and turning them into Hollywood superstars complete with a sprawling mansion.

There is also a quirky nod to Damien Chazelle’s Babylon in this portion, with one striking shot gliding through multiple film sets built within the same location as extras bustle around. The story even follows Babylon‘s trajectory as Hollywood transitions from silent films to talkies.

Naturally, the Minions’ gibberish has no place in this new era, as their verbal nonsense hilariously disrupts scenes inspired by Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon and Citizen Kane. Soon enough, the Minions are back on the road searching for a new master.

A Monster Movie Dream

Three of them have other plans.

James, the most imaginative and creative of the bunch, dreams of directing a monster movie. His ever supportive best friend Henry stands beside him, but there is one problem. They need real monsters.

Fortunately, Ed, a hard-of-hearing Minion, has tagged along carrying a magical book that once belonged to their former wizard master, which is capable of summoning monsters.

Their first creation is a Cthulhu-like creature called Goomi (Trey Parker), who turns out to be anything but gigantic. Grateful for being freed from imprisonment, Goomi promises to help them find more monsters for their film.

Of course, he has motives of his own.

This then becomes the central plotline that, of course, justifies the title, and it feels like an affectionate tribute to the B-movie monster films of the era. Even the monsters eventually conjured lovingly reference classic screen creatures from films like Creature From The Black Lagoon and The Blob, with even callbacks to movies like King Kong.

There is a certain earnestness to both the friendship between James and Henry and James’ determination to make a monster movie that gives this track a warm vibe. The humour continues to land here, with one particularly funny Chaplinesque slapstick sequence involving Henry being chased by the monsters.

A Shoe-Horned Side-Track

But if James, Henry and Ed are busy making their monster movie, what are the other Minions up to?

Here’s where Minions & Monsters begins to lose momentum. The remaining Minions find a new master, a robot named Dort (Jesse Eisenberg), who claims to have come from outer space to conquer Earth. The problem is that his overly polite manners hardly match his supposed evil ambitions.

Clearly inspired by Klaatu from The Day the Earth Stood Still, Dort’s invasion plot, followed by his romance with Debbie (Zoey Deutch), one of the leaders of the suffragette movement, feels shoehorned into a film that simply doesn’t know what to do with the rest of the Minions.

Sure, this storyline eventually contributes to the B-movie monster mayhem of the climax, but it also feels rather deus ex machina, wrapping everything up with surprisingly little tension. At least the previous two Minions movies built towards genuinely exciting third acts.

You will still laugh at the child-friendly tomfoolery of the yellow critters, and there are some visually glorious moments, like James and Henry driving through the gooey innards of a monster, quirkily named Irene. It just doesn’t prove as entertaining as what came before.

Thankfully, Minions & Monsters signs off on a better note, ending with a whimsical tribute to the magic of cinema itself, followed by a hilarious end-credits montage packed with fun cameos from returning characters.

Visually, it is a surprisingly gorgeous-looking film. The way the light bounces off the Minions’ skin gives them a wonderfully tangible, plasticky texture, and most of the environs are quite lushly visualised.

Pierre Coffin continues to perform miracles voicing every Minion with his wonderfully nonsensical babble, while also doing more than a respectable job as the director.

All said and done though, Minions & Monsters is entertaining enough on its own terms, but the yellow horde still does little to lift a Despicable Me franchise that has been running on diminishing returns ever since the first film.

PS: If the Minions exist solely to serve the most evil beings imaginable, why do they spend the climax fighting monsters who possess exactly the kind of evil intentions they have always been searching for? Banana for your thoughts, Mr Minion?