A Clever Mix of Silliness and Cinephilia

The Minions have never gotten much critical respect despite their key role in the Despicable Me series, which has become the highest-grossing animated film franchise ever. So it’s telling that in their newest adventure (the seventh entry overall), the unintelligible little yellow creatures conquer Hollywood, becoming a big-screen sensation. Truth is likely to follow fiction when it comes to Minions & Monsters, which is the smartest, funniest film they’ve appeared in. At least, until it isn’t.

Co-creator Pierre Coffin (directing solo for the first time and scripting with Minion veteran Brian Lynch) makes this effort a love letter to Hollywood. Not the Hollywood of today, mind you, but rather the early days. The film exudes affection even before it begins, with its use of all the Universal Pictures logos from the present day to the studio’s beginning. An opening montage features the Minions inserted Zelig-style into classic footage by the likes of Muybridge and the Lumiere brothers.

The story’s framing device is a tour through a Hollywood museum by an enthusiastic guide (Allison Janney), who is horrified to discover that the young tourists have no idea of the important role the Minions have played in film history. The sequence provides the opportunity for a hilarious cameo by no less than George Lucas.

Cue the flashback, as we see the Minions desperately in search of a new evil boss and running into obstacles at every turn such as nearly killing a giant cyclops. Eventually, they make their way to Hollywood in its early days when they unwittingly find themselves rudely interrupting a movie being directed by Max (Christoph Waltz), who resembles every European émigré who found a new career there.

Max assumes that he’ll be fired when he shows the footage to sibling studio heads Frank and Elwood (both voiced by Jeff Bridges, having a blast). But the movie tycoons know a star when they see one and soon the Minions are the toast of Hollywood. That is, until, like so many silent screen stars, their careers are abruptly ended with the advent of talkies.

The film’s first half, concentrating on their cinematic adventures, contains gags that movie buffs will love even if they’ll completely go over the heads of young viewers, including homages to classic screen routines by Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton. But the movie references don’t end there, with nods to Casablanca, Citizen Kane, ‘50s-era sci films and many more. When the Minions first enter a soundstage, they encounter cinematic epics being shot in every corner and you can feel the exhilaration of making movies.

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When Minions James and Henry (Coffin, who does all the Minion voices, making one hope he has a good ENT doctor) lose their acting careers, they embark on the same path as so many performers. They attempt to become directors, hoping to make a monster movie cast with real monsters. The first one they summon from a book of evil spells turns out to be the disappointingly diminutive, unthreatening Goomi (Trey Parker). But Goomi helps them find the real deal in the form of the fearsome Phillips (Bobby Moynihan) and Howard (Phil LaMarr). When the monsters reveal an evil agenda that goes beyond becoming movie stars, the Minions are forced to battle them to save the world.

Another subplot involves an alien robot (Jesse Eisenberg) whose similar plans for world domination are interrupted when he falls in love with a fetching suffragette (Zoey Deutch).

It’s all, as you’ve probably figured out by now, a bit overstuffed. Minions & Monsters proves much more effective in its first half before the monsters, who eventually include a large orange blob covered with countless eyes, enter the scene and the film degenerates into the usual over-the-top freneticism afflicting so many animated films geared to kids.

But for a good while at least, it’s surprisingly sophisticated and effective in its satirical humor, with so many visual gags and Easter eggs that you’ll need multiple viewings to catch them all, which is something that clearly won’t be a problem for Universal.

By the conclusion, when, spoiler alert, James wins a coveted golden film award, it’s hard not to think that the same goal is held by the film’s creators. And this time, they may have a shot at pulling it off.