Those brave enough to proclaim the Minions of Despicable Me fame as a hilarious reprisal of the sub-verbal slapstick comedy that permeated early Hollywood finally get to see the quiet part said aloud. The third Minions and seventh overall Despicable Me film opens with the beloved banana-colored monsters inserted into famous early films: Muybridge’s Dog Running, the Lumiere Brothers’ Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory, and Georges Melies’ A Trip to the Moon. The type of audience member who reads Substacks about films may start to think they are in for something more than what “seventh overall Despicable Me film” would imply.
The good news is that Minions & Monsters is unexpectedly good…to a point.
Hollywood museum tour guide and the film’s narrator Olivia (Alison Janney) guides a group through a history of cinema culminating in the crowning achievements of James and Henry, the Minions who saved Hollywood. Cue the story. Along the way, we encounter domineering twin studio executives (Jeff Bridges in a sneakily fantastic dual performance), the onset of sound and the Great Depression, Jazz music, and the women’s suffrage movement. Writers Pierre Coffin and Brian Lynch get a lot of mileage out of the period and the first third is a hilarious adventure through history, both of film and humanity.
Unfortunately, it feels like there were two competing pitches for the film. One is a satire of and an ode to classic Hollywood. The other is a series of setpieces involving eldritch monsters and 1950s sci-fi aliens. That latter film takes center stage more and more as the second and third acts try to find a throughline plot.
The script’s best characters the studio executives and beleaguered director Max (Christoph Waltz) are replaced by a trio of monsters (Trey Parker, Bobby Moynihan, and Phil LaMarr) and a romance so undeveloped and absurd, and not in the funny way, that it seems only there to fill time.
Part of what makes this swerve so frustrating is that an integration of the two parts is conceivable. And such a combination could actually say something about the power of movies, about the value of genre fare like sci-fi and horror that is often deemed lesser. The characters recall films like The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) and the kaiju monster subgenre. Yet the scenes here are less a parody of those films and more the usage of those tropes to try and hastily construct an actual plot, villain, and climax.
The Illumination films this decade have often fallen into the problem of trying to construct a plot around exciting action-comedy sequences, rather than the other way around. The Super Mario films are probably the worst offender of this. Minions & Monsters is not that bad, but it is still strongly felt. Scenes can feel like the product of “what if?” pitches that were all produced separately. What if the Minions became 1920s Hollywood stars? What if the Minions accidentally summoned Cthulhu? These are not bad ideas, which is why the film works as often as it does, but it could have been so much better if they were actually held together by something more than nonsensical segues.
The Hollywood elements are largely pastiche and set-ups for jokes aimed at cinephile parents. Don’t get me wrong, those jokes are a lot of fun and make the film worth a watch. I just wish the whole film had actually built itself off the initial premise of filmmaking, rather than use it as a mask for scene transitions that were not thought out. No one expects Minions 3 to have substance, which is precisely why it would have been nice to see.
Where Minions & Monsters can excel is in serving as an entry point for kids into silent film, Westerns, and other genres that hold less currency today. Several scenes are full of direct references and recreations from classic films. After watching, these original scenes can be shared and spark conversation, which could be edifying for the development of new cinephiles. You definitely cannot show the kiddos Babylon (2022) and Minions & Monsters is the next best thing. Treat it as Turner Classic Movies for the K-Pop Demon Hunters generation.
Where parents might need to be more discerning is in the film’s portrayal of slapstick violence, magic, and monsters. There is a lot of the former, especially in an extended prologue where the Minions keep accidentally killing their bosses. This is largely on the level of Looney Tunes, but mileage may vary.
Second, a core part of the plot is magic and the summoning of monsters. This does not go well for the characters, but I know there might be parents who are especially wary of any portrayal of magic in kids’ movies. The magic itself appears to be nonsensical and not rooted in anything real.
Finally, the monsters may be a little too scary even if they are mostly played comedically. Again, mileage varies depending on temperament, which I say as someone who grew up on Labyrinth and Coraline. Based on these three elements, it may not be the best for the littlest ones.
Minions & Monsters is now playing in theaters.
Props to Illumination for actually trying to make a real movie instead of just pumping out more soulless slop like they usually do.