Minions and Monsters Review

Minions and Monsters is the seventh film in the Despicable Me franchise, and honestly, it is pretty much what I expected. It was cute, it was fun, the kids are going to eat it up, and there are just enough jokes flying over their little heads to keep the adults from staring at the ceiling and questioning why they volunteered to take the kids to the movies.

The biggest surprise for me was the animation. This movie looks fantastic. Not “yeah, it looks good for a kids movie” good. I mean there were scenes where I was genuinely wondering if what I was looking at was animated or not. That is how good some of this looked. Illumination has clearly figured out how to make these movies look way better than they probably have to, because let’s be honest, the kids would have shown up for the adorable little yellow Tic Tacs screaming nonsense either way.

Pixar, you have been served. Just on animation. Story is still all Pixar.

The story is really about four main Minions: Henry, James, Ed, and Dick.

James likes to draw and just wants to tell stories. Henry becomes his best friend after watching James cause complete chaos with an Ogre master and deciding, “Yes, this lunatic is my kind of people.” Their friendship is the heart of the movie, and it works better than I expected. Henry and James have a nice little bromance, and you actually feel that they care about each other, which is more emotional weight than I expected from a movie where half the dialogue sounds like someone threw Portuguese, Italian, baby talk, and a broken kazoo into a blender.

Ed is a Minion who is hard of hearing and tags along with Henry and James. He adds a nice extra layer to the group without taking over the story. I also liked that Ed being hard of hearing was just part of who he was, not some giant after-school-special announcement.

Then there is Dick.

Dick is just a dick.

He doesn’t care about making movies. Nor does he care about James wanting to tell stories. He just wants to find a new master to serve, because apparently some Minions are born with dreams and some are born as middle management.

The movie starts on a tour of a Hollywood studio before jumping into the story of different Minion tribes all over the world searching for a master. That is a fun idea and gives the movie a bigger feel than just “Gru’s little yellow banana vacuums do another thing.”

After getting kicked off an island by their Ogre master, the Minions stumble into Hollywood during the silent film era and accidentally become movie stars. They work with a director named Max, played by Christoph Waltz, and honestly, that whole section is probably where the movie is at its funniest. The silent film stuff works really well because Minions were basically built for silent film comedy anyway. They are yellow chaos gremlins with goggles and overalls.

Then sound comes to the movies, and that becomes a problem because the Minions speak gibberish. Once people actually need to understand what the stars are saying, the Minions are suddenly a lot less employable. They get fired from the studio by the brothers who run it, played by Jeff Bridges, and from there the group splits.

The voice cast is also way better than it has any right to be. Christoph Waltz, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg, and even a George Lucas cameo all show up in a movie about little yellow lunatics accidentally destroying Hollywood history. But because the movie is about movies, it actually works. It gives the whole thing a weird “prestige nonsense” energy, which is exactly the kind of nonsense I respect.

James, Henry, and Ed still want to make movies. Dick takes the other Minions to find a new master, because again, Dick is a dick.

This is where the movie finally starts shifting toward the “Monsters” part of the title, although it takes a while to get there. James, Henry, and Ed use a magic book they took from one of their previous masters, who comically fell because of their usual brand of Minion nonsense. They try to release a Cthulhu-type monster, but instead they release Goomi the Deceiver, who leads them to more monsters and eventually the big monster-movie finale.

The monsters are fun. They have a nice goofy energy and they are never too scary for the kids. But for a movie called Minions and Monsters, they really make you wait to get to the second half of the title. The first half of the movie is definitely funnier than the second half, and I do think the monster stuff should have shown up earlier.

I wanted a little more monster in my monster movie.

Meanwhile, the other Minions meet Dort, a robot played by Jesse Eisenberg. After they watch him accidentally take out some hoodlums, they decide he must be their new master. Dort brings them home to meet his roommate Floyd and eventually falls for a woman named Debbie.

I liked the Floyd name. Maybe I am giving the movie too much credit, but it felt like a nice little callback to Brad Pitt in True Romance, and if that was intentional, well done. If it was not intentional, I am giving the point anyway.

The Dort and Debbie story is also fun because Dort starts to fall in love with her in the middle of his mission to take over the Earth. The movie keeps playing with whether Dort is actually an alien robot or just some awkward weirdo in a metal suit, and when you finally get clarification, it is handled in a fun way.

Gru and the girls are not really in this thing. They only show up in the end credits, so do not go in expecting this to be a Gru movie. This is a Minions movie, and more specifically, it is a Henry and James movie.

Overall, Minions and Monsters is cute and about what I expected, but I do think it is the best of the Minions movies so far. It is not the best movie in the entire Despicable Me franchise, but it is also nowhere near a waste of time. The animation is incredible, the first half is very funny, Henry and James give it more heart than I expected, and there are enough adult jokes sprinkled in to make it work for parents too.

I just wish the monsters had shown up sooner.

Final score: 7 nunchucks out of 10.