Minions & Monsters

Gotta admit, I wasn’t expecting a reference to the 1895 short film Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Minions & Monsters, but it just goes to show that, even in their seventh big-screen outing, those miniature yellow blobs still have some surprises up their sleeves. Returning director Pierre Coffin bombards viewers with the slapstick and gibberish you expect in a Minions movie, but the references to cinema history — and the love letter to both moviemaking and moviegoing — give this kiddie sequel a wonderful jolt of smarts and sentiment.

The screenplay by Coffin and Brian Lynch opens with a tour guide (voiced by Allison Janney) leading a group through an exhibition on the history of movies, one that includes the robot from Metropolis, an E.T. figurine, and actual George Lucas (voiced by George Lucas) in a glass case. But when none of the museum visitors recognize the minions James and Henry, she stops to tell them the story of two of cinema’s most important figures. It’s a tale that involves the minions’ historical search for a villainous “big boss” to serve, a quest that eventually brings them to Hollywood in the 1920s, where they stumble upon the filming of a Western in the hopes of becoming sidekicks to a bank robber.

They ruin the shoot, but their screen presence makes them immediate stars in a series of films. As for so many non–English-speaking movie stars, unfortunately, the arrival of talkies spells the end of their careers. James and Henry and their pal Edgar stick around Hollywood, hoping to make their epic movie Minions & Monsters, while their comrades glom onto Dort (Jesse Eisenberg), who may be an alien bent on conquering Earth, but who might also be an out-of-work actor with a robot costume and a crappy apartment. It could really go either way.

It’s a big, bright, colorful romp through the 1920s, with everything from suffragettes to a booming stock market, and the gags fly fast and furious. (Parents who are introducing their kids to the works of Chaplin, Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Orson Welles will appreciate the shout-outs they all get here.) The minions get to inflict their brand of chaos on the dawn of Hollywood, and Minions & Monsters becomes a celebration of the practical magic of moviemaking — who needs AI when you can summon actual monsters from an old book of spells? — and the collective experience of seeing movies together in the theater.

Coffin’s goofy voicing of all the Minions remains hilarious, what with its nutty mix of French, Spanish, Italian, English, and unrecognizable mouth sounds. Meanwhile, the movie stars have come to play, particularly Eisenberg, whose hilariously deadpan take on Dort plays a big role in maintaining the mystery of who or what Dort even is. (Along the way, Dort has a sweet courtship with a proto-feminist voiced by Zoey Deutch.) Jeff Bridges clearly had a blast playing two movie-mogul brothers, and Christoph Waltz brings real sweetness to his performance as a director who encourages the minions’ big-screen dreams.

Families looking for summertime air-conditioned entertainment for all ages will find it at Minions & Monsters, a colorful extravaganza that gives us yellow lunatics, an adorable green lil’ Cthulu, and an orange destroyer of worlds that sloshes about like an Aperol granita with a million eyes floating in it. And that’s cinema.

Director: Pierre Coffin
Co-director: Patrick DeLage
Screenwriters: Brian Lynch, Pierre Coffin
Cast: Trey Parker, Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz, Jesse Eisenberg, Jeff Bridges, Zoey Deutch, Bobby Moynihan, Phil LaMarr
Executive producers: Brian Lynch, Chris Renaud
Producers: Chris Meledandri, Bill Ryan
Music: John Powell
Sound design: Jeremy Bowker, supervising sound editor, sound designer
Production companies: Universal Pictures, Illumination
In English
90 minutes