Producers: Chris Meledandri and Bill Ryan Director: Pierre Coffin Screenplay: Pierre Coffin and Brian Lynch Cast: Pierre Coffin, Trey Parker, Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz, Jesse Eisenberg, Zoey Deutch, Jeff Bridges, Bobby Moynihan, Phil LaMarr and George Lucas Distributor: Universal Pictures
Grade: C+
The little yellow bullet-shaped, gibberish-spouting critters that became the breakout stars of the “Despicable Me” franchise are back in their third solo outing (and the seventh entry in the overall series). “Minions & Monsters” starts out with a clever first act that will appeal especially to movie buffs before getting bogged down in familiar anarchic action and some rather dull new characters.
It all begins with a cheeky gag that shows changes in the opening Universal logo in reverse chronological order, taking us back to the silent movie era. A prologue in which a studio tour guide (voiced by Allison Janney) explains to her group the importance of two minions, James and Henry (voiced, as are all of them, by writer-director Pierre Coffin) to early Hollywood history. Cue the flashback that makes up the rest of the picture.
After the irrepressible duo, joined by mute Ed, ruin their tribe’s efforts to find a rotten new master to serve, causing disasters to befall a cyclops, a wizard and a pirate among others, they stumble into a scene being filmed for a cowboy movie by a director named Max (Christoph Waltz) and turn it into a catastrophe. But when bulbous studio heads Frank and Elwood (both Jeff Bridges) love the footage of the destruction, Max searches out the minions with an offer to star in his movies, and they become worldwide sensations, rich and famous.
This section of the picture will delight adults who recognize all the references, from Chaplin and Keaton to classic Universal monsters, even if most of them will fly over the heads of the moppets in the audience.
The sudden advent of sound leads, of course, to a “Singin’ in the Rain” turn of fate as the minions’ inability to recite dialogue intelligibly in scenes that range from Sam Spade to Citizen Kane gets them the boot. James, who’s always been doodling images and thinking up stories, suggests they should make their own movie, but Dick, the self-appointed tribal leader, dismisses the idea and leads all the minions but James, Henry and Ed, off to find a new evil master.
James comes up with a script pitting minions against monsters, but when he pitches the idea to Max, the director says that they’d have to come up with a genuine monster to make it work. He does, however, give James his personal camera as a sign of his faith in him.
The solution comes from Ed, who’d filched the wizard’s book of spells way back when and suggests using it to conjure up a monster for their movie. When they try a spell, however, it results in a disappointingly small creature called Goomi (Trey Parker) that looks a bit like a miniature Cthulhu. But he offers to take them to a frigid island where they’ll find the big, fearsome types they’re looking for.
Goomi keeps his word, but true to his nickname The Deceiver, has them unleash Phillips (Bobby Moynihan) and Howard (Phil LaMarr)—not, however, to star in James’s movie, but to help him summon Irene, an oozing orange blob pocked with eyes, to destroy the world.
Meanwhile, Dick and his followers have stumbled on a new master—an alien robot called Dort (Jesse Eisenberg)—think a thin, dopey cousin of Gort—who’s recruiting aides for a projected invasion of earth. They stick with him even though he’s distracted by an infatuation with Debbie (Zoey Deitch), a pretty suffragette, and initially runs away when Irene begins her rampage.
Fortunately, Dort returns with an armada of space-age minions as those on the ground are fighting an apparently losing battle against Irene. And the footage of the apocalyptic struggle shot by Ed makes for a movie that wins James the accolades that Max agrees he richly deserves. Indeed, the final credits of “Minions & Monsters,” punctuated by brief skits that include ones involving Gru (though no Steve Carell), indicate that he directed it, too.
In all likelihood it’s the latter two-thirds of “Minions & Monsters” that will appeal to the kids in the audience, better capturing the sense of manic glee that marks the diminutive troublemakers as favorites among the younger set. But the riotous mood seems rather dutiful this time around, and is undermined by new characters that are, frankly, rather tedious.
Goomi, for instance, is much less amusing than he’s meant to be, and Phillips and Howard utterly lack the personality of Pixar’s Mike and Sulley, for example. As for Irene, one supposes she’s intended as a homage to the old Steve (or to be more precise, Steven) McQueen teen horror “classic,” but she’s just an amorphous bore. Dort’s awkwardness, meanwhile, is merely bland, and his romance with Debbie, despite the commitment of Eisenberg and Deutch, is a non-starter. (Better if scripters Coffin and Lynch had gone with building up the back-and-forth between the robot and his sour landlady, who’s constantly peering out her door to berate him.)
On the other hand, one appreciates the old-timey movie references of the first act, the good-natured wildness of the rest, and the vocal contributions of Waltz, Bridges and Janney. And, of course, those of Coffin, whose minion babblings, however electronically modified, remain funny without becoming annoying (like Alvin and the Chipmunks, for instance). And one would not be too amiss in suggesting that their dialogue (which includes a few more real words than usual, it seems) is actually an improvement on what one hears coming out of the mouths of a great many characters in other movies, animated or not.
The movie looks fine, of course, in the typical Illumination style, and Greg Perler’s editing keeps it moving spiffily along, the colorful visuals complemented by John Powell’s energetic score.
This is hardly a classic, but it should please Minions fans, who are as numerous and dedicated as the banana-loving critters are themselves. It certainly won’t derail Universal’s juggernaut of a franchise, even if it doesn’t lift it to new heights.