Minions & Monsters could be the funniest movie I see this year.  Two factors play into this assessment.  First, Hollywood studios rarely make pure comedies these days, which means that this one will have little competition for the title.  Second, this movie is hilarious.  Did it matter to me that this movie was made for kids?  Not at all.  If this is the best funny business Hollywood has to offer, I’ll take it.  All hail the Minions, the new kings of comedy!

One aspect of these Minions films that I respect is their utter disregard for logic.  There’s no setup too implausible for a joke.  This movie confidently states that there were multiple tribes of Minions, which was news to me.  The reason for this is so that the movie can recycle one of their signature routines, which is how the Minions accidentally kill every Big Boss they set their eyes on.  Among their victims in this movie are a giant cyclops, an Egyptian mummy and a wizard, the last of which is how the monsters are eventually introduced to the plot.

Before the monsters show up, the Minions stumble into a live film shoot during the 1920s.  They pursue a desperado on horseback without realizing he’s an actor, much to the chagrin of director Max (Christoph Waltz).  However, when Max shows the footage to bulbous studio heads Frank and Elwood (both Jeff Bridges), they’re delighted.  The Minions are tailor-made for silent era comedy and prove their mettle by taking out a group of faux Vikings on cue.

Max and the Minions are a pairing made in Hollywood heaven, bringing in loads of money for them and the studio.  The Minions have always been the perfect vehicles for physical comedy, and the movie acknowledges the sources of their inspiration with cameos from Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and others.  If you know your film history, you’ll love all of the easter eggs in this movie.

All is well until the introduction of sound arrives, and the Minions are toast.  Now, having a Minion play the Sam Spade or Charles Foster Kane role makes no sense, but it allows for a hilarious montage of classic film spoofs.  Max should have relegated the Minions to comedies, but he wanted to do big things with his stars and it failed because the Minions’ gibberish-speak makes them unsuitable for talkies.  After a good run, they’re suddenly on the street with zero prospects.

With their Hollywood career effectively over, Minion “Dick” (heh heh) insists that the group resume searching for a Big Boss.  Up to this point, this has been the Minions raison d’etre.  However, Henry has caught the filmmaker bug and wants to make a movie.  The group splinters into two factions, with James and Edward remaining with Henry while Dick and the rest look for an evil genius to support.

Dick and company run into a curious robot named Dort (Jesse Eisenberg), who proclaims that an invasion is imminent and that he will lead it.  Despite the fact that Dort is a pint-sized version of Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still and lives in a meager apartment with a roommate, Dick proclaims him the Big Boss.

Meanwhile, Henry hits on the idea of making a monster movie.  He asks Max for help, but all he gets is encouragement and his first hand-held camera.  He needs a monster, but has no money to make one.  Henry remembers he still has the wizard’s book of spells, which is perfect because a free monster is all that he can afford.

Henry conjures a monster, but instead of a scary one he gets the little Goomi (Trey Parker), who’s friendly and totally supports Henry’s vision of making a monster movie.  All he needs is the spellbook and he’ll get Henry some scary monsters. (Uh oh.)  Goomi frees his ginormous friends Howard (Phil LaMarr) and Phillips (Bobby Moynihan) from their frozen prison and tells them that they’re going to help Henry, wink-wink.  (A running theme in the movie is that innocent and trusting Minions are completely susceptible to Hollywood illusions.)

Back in LA, Dort has become romantically attached to naive Earth girl Debbie (Zoey Deutch), making Dick question whether Dort’s the real deal or just a goofball in a robot suit.  Not to worry, Dick, your faith will be rewarded with an epic alien versus monster showdown!

Recommendation

I’m not embarrassed to admit how much I looked forward to seeing Minions & Monsters.  I wanted it to make me laugh from the beginning until the end and all points in between, you know, like comedies used to do.  I’m tired of the typical blockbuster that only offers a handful of quips or snarky dialog and considers that “mission accomplished”.  I wanted to see a movie that was made to be funny and delivers on that promise.  To my amazement, this one was just what the doctor ordered.

As someone who grew up watching Bugs, Daffy and the rest of the Looney Tunes characters on Saturday mornings, I fully appreciate these Minions movies doing whatever it takes to get a laugh.  This one has the usual silly stuff that the Minions are known for.  However, this movie is more than just a steady stream of juvenile (infantile?) jokes.  It has heart and is even inspirational.

Much of the comedy in Monsters comes from two themes: a love of movies and the filmmaking process.  For the former, it uses many famous images from the first sixty years of motion pictures as a way of celebrating history while simultaneously poking fun at it.  (Think of it as if the ending of Babylon was remade as a cartoon.)  What’s important here is that the movie never mocks history.  Writer-director Pierre Coffin loves old movies too much to do that.  Instead, he has the Minions remind adults of their greatness while also introducing them to a new generation.

What surprised me about Monsters was how much affection it has for the way movies used to be made.  Henry and James, the lead Minions this time around, are fascinated by classic Hollywood production techniques.  They are in awe of soundstages where movie magic is made using practical effects.  Henry is thrilled when he gets a hand-me-down movie camera.  He even storyboards his movies using pen and paper.  All of this is incredibly ironic, given that the Minions are entirely computer-generated.  Coffin may make all of his movie magic on a computer, but he remembers the old ways and doesn’t want them to be forgotten.

What makes Monsters unique in the Despicable Me/Minions franchise is its optimism.  The movie looks wistfully upon the Hollywood of yesteryear as an era of possibilities, where a fellow creative like Henry can follow his dream and be successful.  This sequel is more of a “one for me” entry, which is extremely rare for an animated franchise.  I’m glad Universal gave Coffin the freedom to do his movie his way, before he’s faced with once again coming up with another plot for Gru and his family.

When it comes to the Minions movies, it’s easy to overlook the voice actors besides Coffin, who voices all of his feisty yellow Tic Tacs.  Monsters wisely employs actors with distinct voices and deliveries for the supporting characters, which benefits the movie tremendously.  Trey Parker (South Park) is wonderful as the jittery mini-monster Goomi.  Christoph Walz brings his loopy Euro-cadence to Max the director.  Jeff Bridges is blustery as the twin studio heads.  I enjoyed Bobby Moynihan and Phil LaMarr’s repartee as the monsters.  All told, Jesse Eisenberg was the standout as the doltish robot Dort.

Minions & Monsters is the best entry in the franchise, a love letter to old Hollywood that serves as the launchpad for the antics the Minions are known for.  It’s silly stuff, but also surprisingly heartfelt.  Highly Recommended.

Analysis

When I gave The Super Mario Galaxy Movie a negative review, people defended it because it was “a kids movie”.  Never mind that those folks weren’t kids themselves, but the counterpoint was that I was criticizing it too harshly as an adult.  It shouldn’t matter that the plot made no sense, or that it was rarely funny or exciting.  If it weren’t for the colorful animation, Jack Black’s wild man energy and the belated arrival of Fox McCloud, the movie barely qualifies as entertainment.

But I don’t want to use this review to throw stones at Galaxy.  I’ve said enough about it and don’t want to belabor my side any further.  Instead, I want to discuss why Minions & Monsters is so good.  People online have called it the best one out of the eight Despicable Me and Minions movies, and they’re right.  So what did writer-director Pierre Coffin and Illumination do differently this time around to warrant such universal praise?

A reality check

First off, the animation style of this movie is no different from the previous entries.  In fact, the reported budget of $85m is modest for an animated film coming from a major studio (Universal).  Illumination clearly has the production of these movies down to a science, meaning that they can churn them out for under $100m without breaking a sweat.  For the purposes of comparison, Toy Story 5 is pegged at $250m.  Granted, TS5 is longer than M3 and has far more complex animation than the latter, but the disparity in costs is amazing.

Second, the Minions are still the Minions for the most part.  As I mentioned above, there are still plenty of stupid jokes that you can’t help laughing at.  One gag involves a Minion mistaking a mummy’s wrappings as toilet paper.  Same goes for when the giant cyclops steps on a piece of art made by Henry, jumps around in pain and ultimately falls down hill.  It’s slapstick in its purest form.

How we got here

When the Minions began starring in their own movies, I took it as Coffin meeting audience demand in between Despicable Me sequels in the easiest way possible.  The first two Minions movies were basically jokes with an incidental plot.  Minions: The Rise of Gru is half young Gru and half Minions, but the Gru part is primarily about the villains who inspired him before he became the Big Boss.  The Minions movies were basically lightweight placeholders that made a lot of money.

A funny thing happened with Despicable Me 4, however.  The movie was evenly divided between the Gru and the Minions, and the Gru part was dull.  He and his family were put into  witness protection and relocated to the suburbs, which resulted in an uninspired fish-out-of-water subplot.  The other half of the movie with the Mega Minions was funnier and energized, and I suspected that the next Minions movie would focus on these goofy superheroes.

While that hasn’t come to pass, it was obvious that Gru had become a drag on the franchise and should be put out to pasture.  Instead of being evil, he was nothing more than a grumpy family man who had been co-opted by the system.  Gru was working for the man, albeit covertly, but was no longer subversive or malevolent.  He was reduced to being a strange looking guy with a funny voice.

The Minions take center stage

Like the first Minions movie, Monsters does not include Gru in the story.  He only appears in the credit sequences as the butt of jokes.  But unlike their first two movies, this one has an actual plot.  After getting the usual shenanigans involving their quest for–and destruction of–their Big Bosses out of the way, the movie goes in two directions.  Henry, James and Edward try to make a movie, while Dick and the rest of the Minions hitch their wagon to Dort.  Both plots are funny, but they’re more than just structures for jokes.

In having the story be driven by the intentions of Henry, James, Edward instead of chance, the Minions become more than the source of gags.  The stakes of the plot now directly involve them.  In other words, we care about these Minions and what happens to them.

Instead of being funny sidekicks, the Minions in this movie are blinded by their dreams, which gives the story some dramatic irony.  Henry doesn’t see that trusting Goomi is a bad idea, but we do.  On the other hand, Dick puts himself at risk of mutiny for viewing Dort as a legitimate Big Boss, which we suspected from the beginning.  We may still want the Minions to make us laugh, but we also want to see Henry succeed and Dick to get a well-deserved comeuppance for being a, well, you know.

Something for adults

Monsters is also the first Despicable Me/Minions movie that has something for the adults in the audience.  There’s a lot of references in the movie that little kids won’t get that their parents and grandparents will (or should).

The movie opens with a framing device set in a movie museum with references to many classic movies.  It even has a joke featuring the actual George Lucas.  There’s also a wonderful black and white sequence, probably inspired by the ending of Babylon, that charts the beginning of the movies until roughly the Twenties.  Little kids won’t know who Georges Méliès was, the movie Metropolis or even George Lucas.  Later references to Citizen Kane and Sam Spade certainly would also go over their heads.  But adults should understand what the movie is doing.  

And while I’m confident that parents who saw the previous entries in this franchise laughed along with their kids, this is the first one that speaks directly to the parents.  And while it will put parents on the spot with having to explain all of the references to their kids, getting young viewers interested in classic movies is always a good thing.

A Gold Watch for Gru

Perhaps I’m being mean in demanding Gru’s retirement.  But after how superfluous his character was in Despicable Me 4 and the fact that he’s nonexistent in the excellent Minions & Monsters, the time has come to shuffle him off to the supervillain retirement home.

I wouldn’t feel bad for Gru.  He’s not the first Big Boss to be eclipsed by his subordinates.  At one point the Simpsons were a small part of the Tracey Ullman Show.  The parallels between the Simpsons and the Minions are uncanny.  Both yellow and legion in number.  The stories featuring both cartoon families are filled with satire, parodies and cultural references.  And now that Monsters has introduced the notion of multiple Minion tribes, the possibilities for future Minion stories are endless.  Sorry Gru, but your service is no longer required.