The Minions’ third solo outing is a somewhat scattered affair peppered with great moments and laughs.
Minions & Monsters starts off with the Minions serving the ancient cyclops, and eventually makes it to 1920s Hollywood, where the Minions have decided to make a monster movie. That’s why this one is called Minions & Monsters.
After their initial appearance in Despicable Me, I sort of grew to hate these little bastards. They generally annoy the piss out of me. But this time out, they have a little more edge, and some of their tomfoolery in Hollywood did get me giggling. It doesn’t hurt that they’ve pulled in the likes of Trey Parker and Jesse Eisenberg to voice some very funny new characters.
The movie gets by on its ability to be weird and funny—but it could’ve been a lot better. I was actually expecting more of a history-of-Hollywood scenario, with the Minions going through all of the different film periods leading up to today.
Instead, the film makes it as far as the ’20’s—with some fun nods to Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin—and then it focuses on their efforts to conjure a monster for their proposed movie. I felt a little shortchanged by the last half of the film.
But I must admit, I had some good laughs throughout Minions & Monsters. An alien subplot with Eisenberg voicing a space robot named Dort who has a roommate named Floyd (Perhaps a little tribute to Brad Pitt in True Romance?) is the best bit in the movie. In fact, it’s the best bit in all of the Minions movies.
It’s a solid achievement for an entire Minions movie to not drive me crazy. It’s one of the summer’s bigger surprises—in that I didn’t hate it.
