Minions and Monsters Review: These Little Yellow Dudes Shine in Story of Hollywood's Origins
Who knew the Minions have been around since the dawn of Hollywood?
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The rise and success of Universal's Minions seems like a Hollywood fairy tale. Strange little foreigners are given the role of sidekick to an A-list voice actor in a movie, meant to provide some comic relief, and end up not only eclipsing that film but becoming a juggernaut unto themselves. They're essentially the Ruby Keeler of the 2020s (go watch 42nd Street if you don't get the reference).
In a way, Minions & Monsters is a movie reflecting on that same origin story, detailing to audiences how the Minions have been around since Hollywood's inception. And leaving a string of disasters in their wake. Director Pierre Coffin (who also co-wrote the script with Brian Lynch) take the tenets of a Hollywood story, animate, and make it a fun, zippy story perfectly suited for the Minions. Minions & Monsters isn't reinventing the wheel, but where else are you going to find a movie with references to Damien Chazelle's Babylon and a subplot involving human/robot relations?
During a trip to a movie-centric theme park (that's definitely not Universal Studios), a tour guide sits her group down to tell them about the most important people in Hollywood: two Minions named Henry and James. James loves to tell stories, putting him at odds with the other Minions who just want to serve a "big boss." When the group lands in Los Angeles, the allure of the movies immediately intrigues James, who wants to be a director. But when he decides to make a monster movie, conjuring up some real monsters with the help of Goomi (voiced by Trey Parker), it unleashes a terror that could destroy the world itself.
Minions & Monsters, bare minimum is a movie about our collective love of movies. Starring the Minions. These little buggers shouldn't be able to capture our attention for 90 minutes yet, wrapped within Coffin and Lynch's script, they are the ultimate audience. We meet them as they're traversing the seas in search of new evil masters to serve. Their purpose is to be the sidekick, the henchman, never the leading man. And yet James is that squeaky wheel desperate to tell his own story. His three fingers are covered in paint and crayons as he spends his days and nights writing out stories, even painting them on makeshift Legos...that end up in the foot of a Cyclops.
The only ones who support James' vision are Henry, James' best friend, and Ed, a Deaf Minion who provides muscle. The camaraderie between these three is so charming. Really, the entire world of the Minions is charming, enhanced by how reliant it is on old-school silent comedy (though Minionese, the language they speak, sound like it's 50% Spanish). That's on top of the numerous filmic references in the movie, with direct callbacks to silent comedians like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, to a Citizen Kane reference. If you're trying to get your kids into classic film, Minions & Monsters is a great place to start.
The film's at its strongest when it gets meta about the Minions and their role in Hollywood. They become the cinematic darlings of their studio, only to quickly lose their career when they actually can't read lines in English. At movie clocking in at barely ninety minutes – and that includes some end credit vignettes – the actual monsters are fairly muted, introduced as James attempts to become a director.
That need for monsters leads James to Goomi, a mini-Cthulhu-esque monster with a huckster persona perfectly suited to the King Kong story James wants to tell. Trey Parker's voice work will leave you think you're hearing Cartman from South Park at times (or, more accurately, Kyle's cousin Kyle), but he's such a great Carl Denham representative. The monsters themselves don't have much personality and are really more a gimmick, another piece of the meta pie that is this entire movie's existence. That also stems to another side plot, involving the rest of the Minions teaming up with an alien robot named Dort (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg).
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The Dort plot line is the most absurd, and out of place, element of Monsters & Minions. At times you wish the movie focused on the Monsters more than the story of a robot who wants to take over the world but gets sidelined by a beautiful suffragette named Debbie (voiced by Zoey Deutch). It's definitely the kookiest element of the movie, but it always comes out of left field and, much like the Buzz's in Toy Story 5, feels like an attempt to get out of a narrative corner.
Minons & Monsters is a delightful little slip of a movie. A pure throwback to the early days of cinema, not just in content but in execution. Give me more of these little yellow guys taking on different genres and I'd be there. Someone who loves movies will love this.
Grade: B-
Minions & Monsters is in theaters today.
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