It’s not often that the seventh film in a 16-year-old franchise, much less an animated series aimed at a target audience probably around half as old as the original film, ends up feeling like the most personal, least by-committee entry, but such is the achievement of Minions & Monsters. The third spin-off of the now itself four-strong Despicable Me series, the latest Minions adventure is unafraid to take risks, moving the action back to the 1920s and basing *a lot* of its story and jokes in a love for Golden Age Hollywood that will be entirely unfamiliar to the vast majority of kids. The rewards for these risks are mixed; Minions & Monsters is apparently gently underperforming at the box office but, on the plus side, I found it the most characterful and enjoyable entry since the very first Despicable Me back in 2010.
With Minions creator Pierre Coffin back in action as director, writer, and voice for the little yellow critters, here he focuses in on two specific Minions – James and Henry. Less concerned with doing the bidding of an evil master than the rest of the chaotic tribe, they find their fulfilment through art and expression, a passion that explodes when the Minions land themselves in 1920s LA and swiftly become the toast of the silent film era, an army of tiny, dungaree-wearing Chaplins and Keatons.
Riffing frequently on Singin’ in the Rain, Minions & Monsters throws a spanner in the works when talkies arrive in Hollywood and the Minions, able to speak only in their now-iconic gibberish, can’t adjust. Most abandon the film industry, choosing to follow a sci-fi inspired, bumbling new robo-alien villain called Dort (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg), but James and Henry decide to turn their talents behind the camera, setting off on a quest to find a monster to star in their new, epic monster movie. Aiming at Cthulhu, they instead stumble upon a tiny, tricksy squid man called Goomi (Trey Parker, playing his second character in this universe), who promises to help them recruit some actual, proper monsters.
It’s a busy story, which is Minions & Monsters’s key weakness, in fact. The sheer amount of plot to get through can get in the way of ludicrous slapstick humour that is this franchise’s bread and butter; the kids in my showing were laughing plenty at all the jokes, but there are a couple too many quiet stretches here for the core Minions audience. If you’re a parent, though, you might find this relative lack of mania a relief, and the love shown here for old movies (which will now be much easier to introduce kids to) is genuine and sweet.
The historical California created by Coffin and the Illumination team is hardly period-accurate to 1927 (at any given point the visual register could be drawing from any year between roughly 1870 and 1950), but this wackadoo LA is a very fun place to inhabit. It looks as shinily excellent as all Illumination stuff, loaded with background gags and funny character designs as well as some of the most ambitious action sequences this series has ever attempted. Cowboys, train crashes, eldritch monsters, and spaceships all coexist in a clatteringly loud harmony and the whole thing zips by (even with credits it’s less than 90 minutes).
By this point in most franchise’s lifespans, they’ve settled into a comfortable but uninspiring groove, which is exactly what the previous outing, Despicable Me 4, felt like. Minions & Monsters is, against most Hollywood series conventions, genuinely trying new things to charm new audiences, all while seeming like a project less out of a studio algorithm/focus test and more out of the specific mind of Pierre Coffin. It doesn’t all work perfectly but, if you’ve been a sceptic of the little yellow men in the past, this stands a good chance of changing your mind.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 