by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $16.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Pierre Coffin, Alison Janney, Jesse Eisenberg, Zoey Deutch, Bobby Moynihan, Jeff Briges, Christoph Waltz, George Lucas, Phil LaMarr, Trey Parker
Intro:
… all kinds of goofy, but at such a purity to be inspiring.
Illumination loves its classics just as much as it loves its villains. From the Tex Avery cartoon inspiration behind The Secret Life of Pets, to its (admittedly middling-at-best) Seuss adaptations, to the Don Bluthian kid-friendly anxiety in Migration, this studio might be the most consistently retro-minded of what could be lumped together as the animation mainstream.
Right from its black-and-white rewind through the Universal Pictures logos of old, Minions & Monsters puts all that love front-and-centre. With its central plot focusing on the titular pill-bodied noisemakers trying to make it in 1920s Hollywood, the physical comedy often pulls from that vanguard, even recreating classic set pieces from Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr. and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. Which are both fitting for a Minions joint, given Keaton’s own musings on the magic of cinema in the likes of Sherlock Jr., and director Pierre Coffin even name-checking Chaplin back in the day as a direct inspiration for the first Minions film (the Tramp’s Nonsense Song from Modern Times is basically proto-Minionese).
Not only is it just plain cool to see stuff like this being explicitly referenced in a modern family film (along with potentially inspiring kids to check out some golden oldies, which is always a plus), the film itself does justice to that style of slapstick.
Minions & Monsters is predominantly about the goofs and gaffs over the story (although the story also has its moments), but the manic energy and buckwild approach to its many chase scenes, fight scenes, and some surprisingly daring one-off gags (putting a full-on decapitation in a kids’ film is crazy, but commendably crazy work) keep things consistently engaging throughout.
It helps that, along with its The-Artist-on-bath-salts perspective on Old Hollywood, the film’s other reference points gradually build up into something quite striking. Continuing the throughline from the first Minions about their search for a Boss to serve, there’s a subplot involving a run-in with Dort (a riff on Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still) and his quite unexpected romance with a suffragette.
Jesse Eisenberg and Zoey Deutch are great as the voices of this couple (particularly Eisenberg), but as fleeting as their subplot ultimately is, they also show an intriguing evolution of the franchise’s general understanding of what makes villains and monsters so intriguing for viewers. It weaves in a bit of outsider solidarity in engaging with kitschy and silly sci-fi and horror, as opposed to more ‘respectable’ genres, because of the comfort they bring to those beyond the margins of ‘normal society’. This is admittedly a small moment, but it creates an interesting underline to the film’s alien robots, blob monsters, and baby Cthulhu.
Minions & Monsters serves as only the latest, although perhaps its most vibrant, showing that the Minions have only ever been held back by being attached to Gru. Leaping clear past the flagrant misstep of Minions: The Rise of Gru and returning to the franchise’s peaks with the first Minions and Despicable Me 3, this is as much a whole-chested embrace of the silly fun of pulpy genre cinema, as it is a high-energy exaltation of the magic of cinematic storytelling. It reads like the work of people who know what they are making is ridiculous, but they love their job because they can make stuff like this, a sentiment that allows for plenty of reciprocal chuckles and even heart stirs. To say nothing of how much its tributary air stands out against the ‘look at all the shiny toys we own’ mode of far too many modern blockbusters, focusing less on just bigging up its own catalogue and more on appreciating what laid the foundation for its own yuks. It’s still all kinds of goofy, but at such a purity to be inspiring.
