“Minions and Monsters” Review: A Love Letter To Cinema… And Banana!

Say what you want about the “Minions”/”Despicable Me” franchise, but there’s no denying its grip on the pop culture zeitgeist. Sixteen years in, these quirky little yellow creatures are still everywhere, in theme parks, fast food tie-ins, endless merch, giving free smiles to younglings worldwide. Those of us who were there from the start have basically grown up alongside this franchise, memes and all.

After all, who’d have thought “Gentle Minions” would be the trending meme when “Rise of Gru” came out, of all things? Dudes were pulling up in droves in suits and ties to the theatre to watch a clearly slapstick, unserious film.

If we’re being honest, though, we felt the franchise had been on a downward, running-out-of-ideas spiral ever since the first “Minions” film. Every sequel since has felt like the same bag of tricks shaken out a little harder, banking on cuteness to paper over the fact that nobody seemed to have a fresh idea for what these little yellow anthropomorphic Twinkies were even for anymore.

And this is exactly why “Minions & Monsters” caught us off guard. Right from the start, it gives off a different vibe, opening with a parade of historical Universal logos rewinding through the decades, not unlike how “Wicked” did it, except with more logos. Then it parodies the “Steamboat Willie” era to a degree, rendering the Minions in that art style. It was right there, at that point, we became aware that Illumination knew ball and were going to flex it in our faces for the next two hours.

That intent carries straight into the framing device. We begin at a film history museum, following a group of visitors on a guided tour of the building. We pass different props, catch a shot of Illumination’s own take on E.T., pass by more exhibits, and then, GEORGE LUCAS? Not a poster, not a statue, it’s the man himself, apparently trapped in a display case.

Colour us surprised, but the man has been in acting purgatory for 19 years, and this is his first role since, and it’s not even Disney “Star Wars” shenanigans. Bello! Holy cow. Sound the alarms.

Anyway, as the group moves along, tour guide Olivia (Allison Janney) begins telling the story of Minions James and Henry, and how they quite literally became part of cinema’s pioneering era.

From here, we go right back to an era skipped over in previous Minions montages, when this different tribe of Minions were still on the hunt for a big boss to serve. This isn’t the tribe that would go on to work for Gru. Like the tribe Bob, Stuart, and Kevin belonged to, this one spends its days trying to serve the world’s greatest villains, and in many different ways winds up killing their masters entirely by accident.

At one point, they’ve found themselves a burly Cyclops, only to accidentally do him in with an ancient stone LEGO brick. He steps on it, a chain reaction follows, and he falls off a cliff into spikes below. Poopaye. Ouch.

From there, it’s mummies, feudal warlords, you name it. Inadvertent deaths, zapping into oblivion, turning to dust, falling apart. Unfortunately, the king who gets his head sliced off in the trailer doesn’t make it into the film itself, but there’s still a healthy amount of cartoon carnage to go around for anyone worried this franchise has gone soft.

It’s amid this body count that we get better acquainted with our actual leads. James, who is more artistic with a passion for painting and drawing, quickly develops a close friendship with two other Minions, Henry and Ed, and this friendship ends up being the emotional spine that the rest of the film hangs off. Among the many masters the trio serve is a wicked warlock, killed by a monster after Henry accidentally summons it from the warlock’s own spellbook. Ed pockets the book afterwards, mostly out of habit, and it turns out to matter a great deal later.

What’s genuinely impressive is how this opening stretch, roughly 15 minutes by our count, is just the Minions, babbling away in full Minionese, with Olivia’s narration doing the heavy lifting in the background to keep things legible. There’s no human dialogue we can actually parse, no human characters to anchor us, just pure slapstick and expression carrying the story.

And it works because Minionese isn’t just gibberish but a language with intention. So, the time you hear them scream “Dua Lipa” at the top of their lungs… there’s a tickling weight to it.

The group soon stumbles across a train robbery and decides to chase after the robber to become his henchmen, only to find out the whole thing was a staged performance for a Hollywood film production. Director Max (a gleeful Christoph Waltz) is furious at having his shoot hijacked, but studio bosses Frank and Elwood (both voiced by Jeff Bridges) are enamoured, and Max ends up hiring the Minions to star in his films anyway.

Now, here is where “Minions & Monsters” really starts showing its hand. What follows is a crash course through the birth of cinema itself, with the Minions slotted directly into it. There’s the Buster Keaton house-stunt homage straight out of “Steamboat Bill, Jr.,” Chaplin-inspired tramp routines, a Harold Lloyd-style dangling-off-a-clock reference, film noir shadows and silhouettes played for laughs, and even an anachronistic riff on “Citizen Kane.” Specific pastiches of “Modern Times” and “Safety Last!” show up too, close enough to spot instantly if you know the originals, loose enough to still land if you don’t.

And to our amusement, the Minions headline silent film after silent film, living large at the studio’s expense, and become a genuine global phenomenon almost overnight, less like mascots and more like actual movie stars who happen to be small, yellow, and incomprehensible.

Alas, when sound cinema comes along, that incomprehensibility stops being an asset. Their gibberish, once their biggest charm, becomes their biggest liability, and they’re unceremoniously fired. It’s tempting to read a bit of Pierre Coffin himself in that beat, a filmmaker who’s spent nearly two decades getting the industry to embrace a joke that barely makes sense on paper.

But James, ever the creative, pitches his own movie, one where the Minions fight giant creatures, titled “Minions and Monsters.” As cinephiles ourselves, it’s hard not to chuckle when James starts talking about framing in Minionese.

At some point during all this, we found ourselves genuinely wondering whether this movie is Oscar-bait, because the love of cinema on display here feels real, not performative. Is this simply the “Babylon” of “Despicable Me”?

That question ends up being the film’s biggest tell. This Old Hollywood stretch, props, pastiche, and all, is where “Minions & Monsters” is genuinely at its best. It also helps that Pierre Coffin is driving this ship solo for the first time in the franchise, and it shows. The film feels looser, more willing to nest jokes inside jokes, less concerned with hitting a studio formula, and more concerned with actually being about something.

It’s not too airtight, though. The back half splits the story in two, not unlike how Brian and Dominic went their separate ways at the end of “Furious 7,” and the momentum takes a bit of a hit.

One half follows James chasing his monster movie dream with the help of a summoned Cthulhu-esque creature named Goomi (Trey Parker, clearly having a ball), who leads him and the others to a frozen fortress to recruit two sea monsters, Phillip and Howard (Bobby Moynihan and Phil LaMarr), as stars for the film. Without spoiling where it goes, Goomi’s real plan turns out to be a fair bit murkier than advertised, and things escalate from a scrappy passion project into a full-blown disaster movie fairly quickly.

The other half follows the rest of the tribe, led by the aptly named Dick (trust us, he’s exactly what you’re picturing), pledging allegiance to an alien robot named Dort (Jesse Eisenberg), a fairly overt riff on Gort from “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” who gets sidetracked falling for a suffragette named Debbie (Zoey Deutch) instead of conquering Earth like he’s supposed to.

Now, the Dort subplot is where the film loses some steam. Don’t get us wrong, it’s still quirky and fun. It just doesn’t land the way the Old Hollywood material does, mostly because it’s competing with a much more interesting story happening elsewhere. The back half also leans harder into standard giant-monster-battle territory, trading the earlier film-nerd specificity for a more generic spectacle.

Still, “Minions & Monsters” earns its goodwill back by the time the credits roll, largely because it never stops being flat-out hilarious, and because the throughline between James and Henry actually holds up all the way through.

One of the most important questions, of course, is whether kids will actually enjoy it. And they do. There’s a scene where Dort gets up to march with the Minions in tow, chanting his name, and a little girl beside us started marching and clapping right along with them, feet-stomping and all. And the laughs were all present throughout the film.

Ultimately, sure, it’s still a whole load of slapstick. Not everyone will enjoy that. Yet, we do not think it feels too generic or bland. Somehow it becomes an appreciation of cinema in the process. For kids, and even the adults tagging along, it’s a surprisingly accessible way to fall a little more in love with the movies or get to know them.

It feels genuine, with real intention behind the silliness, more on its mind than any of us expected walking in. It’s a film about passion, craft, and just having a ball with it all. And that’s more than enough.

Watch the “Minions and Monsters” trailer here:

“Minions and Monsters” is currently playing in cinemas.