Movie - Minions vs Monsters Grade - B+
Movieosa!!
For its seventh installment in the absurdly profitable "Despicable Me" franchise Illumination Studios has turned to the person who best knows the little yellow money-makers to write and direct - their creator and voice actor, Pierre Coffin. Apparently he knew what audiences have suspected all along - that the Minions don't need Gru and his family to be successful. In fact, we can see now that the Humans were always just a distraction.
In Minions vs Monsters Illumination finally explores the Minions themselves and for the first time treats them as individuals, giving a couple of them names and distinct personalities. This doesn't mean that their hive-mind zaniness is gone entirely. It just means that the best parts of this film have some actual plot and character development, and it really helps.
The film has two distinctly different halves, and the first one is much better than the second. It opens with a reverse montage of every Universal Studios opening logo from the present all the way back to their first silent film opening shot, which conveniently takes us back to a time when the Minions were searching the world for a worthy (or basically any) evil boss to follow.
Along the way two particularly clever Minions manage to accidentally kill off each big boss in a hilarious series of slapstick accidents (one featuring a beheading is particularly funny though it pushes the boundaries of a PG rating). By process of elimination, the zany group ends up in the old west where they find themselves caught up in an elaborate train robbery that pays excellent tribute to the great action scenes of the silent era - and turns out to be part of one. The Minions ruin the scene but are quickly discovered by a Hollywood studio that improbably turns them into silent screen idols.
This is the film's strongest half, and I really wish it went on a bit longer. It pays tribute to the great silent era of Hollywood filmmaking in much the same way films like "Babylon" did, with a razor-sharp accuracy undeserving of a film meant for kids. The more of a cinephile you are, the more you will enjoy this Hollywood history lesson that's not entirely out of place. It reveals that the Minions have a long Hollywood ancestry going back to the days of the Keystone Cops, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin, and are perhaps best thought of as the 21st century's answer to Bugs and Daffy.
The most frustrating part of this wonderful sequence is that Illumination couldn't get the rights to the films that would have made the best parodies. Most of those are owned by arch-rival's Warner Brothers and Disney, and we can only imagine what Illumination could have done if given access to the Disney archives.
Featuring individual Minions with names and personalities was enough of a departure from the usual Minions silliness that Illumination decided to play it safe for the film's second half, which devolves into a chaotic story about the Minions fighting giant monsters. Sadly, none of the monsters is closely based on any classic movie monsters, which would have tied the two halves together nicely. It's funny and chaotic in the typical Minions sort of way, although South Park's Trey Parker voicing a baby Cthulhu in a voice that occasionally strays into Eric Cartman is truly hysterical on the occasions when it happens .
The weaker second half feels to this reviewer like Illumination was just too nervous about giving the Minions full-on leading man roles and decided to pull back and play it safe for the film's finale. Considering that the franchise has made $5.4 B before this film, that's a fair concern, but one hopes they learn from the reviews and don't hold back next time. Will there be a next time? $5.4 B says you can count on it.