Latest in the hit franchise series is a gonzo hooray-for-Hollywood nod
Minions and Monsters
With voices by Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg, Zoey Deutch & Bobby Moynihan
Directed by Pierre Coffin
Rated PG
In theaters Friday, July 1
The clownish little yellow, banana-loving, babbling nubbins—which first appeared in the animated Despicable Me in 2010—go Hollywood in this wildly creative, fantastically whimsical, gonzo alternative history of the silver screen.
According to a modern-day movie-museum tour guide (voiced by Allison Janney) in the opening scene, there was no greater creative force in Tinseltown than the Minions. And this is a museum that has George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, as one of its displays!
For movie lovers, it’s all chock-full of cinematic Easter eggs, beginning when we see the opening logos “rewinding” through the years to Universal Studio’s fledgling days. It’s followed by a montage of the Minions incorporated into of some of the earliest silent “moving pictures,” including the Lumière brothers’ groundbreaking short from the late 1800s of a train pulling into a station.
We learn how the Minions—after eons of serving “evil” overlords, including a cyclops, pirates and a mummy—stumbled into Hollywood stardom by scene-stealing a Western and upstaging cowboys, a runaway train, Keystone-ish cops and a biplane. Soon they’re all the rage, and two Minions, James and Henry, become movie moguls.
Then they hit upon the idea of movie monsters, a parallel to Hollywood’s real-life era churning out tales of Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, Dracula, the Invisible Man and other creatures.
But the Minions’ monsters—a trio of ghoulish goofballs summoned from a book of sorcery swiped from one of their previous gigs—don’t want to be in the movies. They want to create havoc, destroy things and gobble people. Uh-oh! Can the Minions return the creatures to the book of spells before it’s too late?
Pierre Coffin—who also co-directed three of the four of the Despicable Me flicks and does all the Minions’ gobbly-gook voices—fills the screen with detail. Minions & Monsters is a rare film made to appeal to kids as well as their parents, and especially to moms and dad who grew up watching movies. It’s a cinematic treasure trove, with blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em nods to dozens of movie pioneers and Hollywood touchstones.
There’s Charlie Chaplin…Buster Keaton…Citizen Kane… a Three Stooges’ eye poke… Bogie and Bacall… a gelatinous monster obviously related to The Blob… a scene that recalls 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea… another with a wink to the pew-pew of Star Wars lasers. It’s a loving crash course in movie history disguised as a kid-friendly rumpus.
Listen for some familiar voices. Jeff Bridges is both Frank and Elwood, a pair of oversized movie-studio fat cats. Jesse Eisenburg is a dorky space-alien robot who lives in a shabby apartment, dreaming of taking over the world. (The robot’s name is Dort, a spin on Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still in 1951.) Zoey Deutsch provides the sweet voice of Debbie, a suffragette who takes a shine to Dort and corrals the Minions into a Hollywood march for women’s rights. Trey Parker, the creator of South Park and Broadway’s The Book of Morman, obviously has fun as Goomi, a green mush-mouthed mini version of a horror icon H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu, a legendary ancient cosmic creature. Christoph Waltz is a studio director who accidentally “discovers” the Minions.
In a meta twist, the Minions become so successful, they launch a film franchise and a merchandising line of goggles and little blue overalls. In real life, the Minions and Despicable Me franchise is one of the highest-grossing film properties in history, an international hit with its own universe of clothing, figurines and other do-dads. That’s no Hollywood fantasy!
This is the first movie in the franchise to not feature Steve Carell, who provided the voice of Gru, the wannabe criminal mastermind central to the stories. But even Gru gets his due in the closing credits.
But whatever you do, don’t strain your brain trying to decipher the Minion’s babble of gibberish, a comical stream of nonsense with smatters and splatters of English, Spanish, Italian, French, Japanese and other dialects. I’m sure I heard the words “miso soup” in there once.
The Minions and their infantile banter remind us of childhood innocence and gleeful play. Add funny monsters and Hollywood to the mix and you’ve got a recipe for a movie about movies, with Minions in the middle, muddling and making another madcap mess before saving the world—and reminding us that hey, it’s only a movie! But it’s their movie! Hooray for Hollywood!
—Neil Pond
