Banana-bylon – Minions & Monsters

You all know my history with the Despicable Me franchise. I loved the first film. I thought the second was alright, but nothing special. I hated the third. I was grateful that the fourth was adequate and competent, mostly because the Minions spinoff movies were just the worst. I admit I occasionally chuckled at the first foray, but it was wholly stupid and unnecessary, and the sequel made me actively angry (but the trailers did lead to what is still my most successful video on YouTube, though my Disney rankings are steadily climbing up the list). Essentially, the core series is hit-and-miss, but the side tangents are awful, mostly because the title characters only really work as comic relief sidekicks, not as central characters, especially when they’re still shunted into support roles once the main plot gets underway. In a meta sense, the fact that they’ve been used for 15 years of inane memes, the fact that we can’t watch anything from Illumination without being inundated with their screaming gibberish, and the fact that they were referred to as deities for a cheap visual gag in Mortal Engines just made me hit my limit, to the point where I now default to being skeptical at best and enraged at worst whenever something new involving them gets announced.

The trailers for Minions & Monsters were no different. As I sat in the theatre watching the previews (several times in front of almost every animated film I’ve seen so far this year), I shuddered at the prospect of putting these yellow gas station Viagra knockoffs into “classic” Hollywood and creating a context where they become film pioneers. As a cinephile, the idea was genuinely insulting, the end result of more than a decade of IP farming, market saturation, and systematic diluting of the creative process, to the point that AI actors are now a thing. To paraphrase Revenge of the Sith, so this is how my industry dies… with fart jokes and “BEE-DOS,” and this is before you consider yet another case where the creators are ignoring their own continuity by positioning the gang in America some 40 years before they “first” arrived and met Scarlet Overkill.

Suffice to say, I was not enthused for this latest salvo. It also didn’t help that my ability to see movies regularly has been stymied again, as I had to junk my car today (leak in the fuel line, would have cost me $2,500 to repair so it could pass a $90 smog test and I could renew my registration for $160 because CAPITALISM; I got a measly $200 as my consolation), meaning I’m limited to theatres I can either walk to or get a ride share. With my leg injury still healing, it is possible for me to walk the 1.5 miles to the nearest AMC, but it is exhausting.

So yeah, there was a lot working against my enjoyment of this picture, but here’s the weird thing… I really liked it. I know. I was shocked, too. I admit I was already a little confused when the advance reviews came out, and the film was hovering ever so close to 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. I’m thinking to myself, This is a Minions movie, right? The sentient Tic-Tacs that say “Banana” all day and get into generally bullshit shenanigans with the vast majority of the “humor” being ass-based? What the hell is going on? I tempered that thought by reminding myself that critics are often kinder to kids films than others, basically giving then a pass if the animation looks nice and the premise is entertaining enough to placate noisy children and give their parents a 90-minute respite (evidenced by the fact that the lowest-rated entry in this franchise is the first Minions movie at 55%; Rise of Gru somehow got to 70%).

Still, I was genuinely, and quite pleasantly, surprised at how straight-up good this latest installment was. I’m not even grading on a curve like I did for Despicable Me 4. This is legitimate quality, and it comes down to a key decision that I would have never thought possible from the Illumination brass, but it was absolutely the correct one:

Apart from some tag jokes during the credits, this film has NOTHING to do with the rest of the series! After so many years of cross-property promotion, cheap references and Easter Eggs, and a creative process more bankrupt than anyone trying to fill their gas tank this year, they made this one – for all intents and purposes – completely standalone. It’s a different “tribe” of Minions, unrelated to Gru’s crew, so we’re not bound to previously established events, and thus we’re free to have some actual fun. There are certainly some issues with the picture, mostly as a result of the few trappings of the property that it can’t fully escape or subvert, but I was stunned at how much I was laughing and how clever and respectful the content was.

The first clue that this would actually be really good is the opening credit roll. We’re treated to a 2D rendering of the Minions in a sort of Bosko and Honey homage, followed by a montage of the little guys inserting themselves into tons of classic films. The intent is a basic belly laugh, but it doesn’t come off as lazy. This is accompanied by the cast list, led by director and longtime voice of every Minion, Pierre Coffin. I can’t remember if he’s ever gotten top billing before, but he certainly deserves it. Whether you love or hate these characters (I’ve gone to both extremes), you can’t deny that Coffin is the one who breathed life into them, and his manic commitment to the bit is what sustains the franchise. Whatever your feelings, these things just don’t exist in the cultural zeitgeist without him.

We then get a brief hiccup in the form of the story’s framing device. Leading what appears to be a movie studio tour (if you’re ever in Los Angeles, I highly recommend the Warner Bros. tour – get in before Paramount destroys it) is a woman named Olivia, voiced by Allison Janney. This raised two red flags. First, she’s already voiced a character in this series (villainous suburban mom Madge in the first Minions), and second, she also refers to the Minions as revolutionary, god-like influences, similar to the aforementioned groan joke. Thankfully, however, the moment itself is used as a self-aware acknowledgement that the premise is utterly absurd, perhaps a first for the entire franchise. Olivia concedes that it all sounds silly at best and downright stupid at worst, but she promises a good story to justify her assertion. Okay, I’m on board.

Things only improve from there. Olivia tells the story of a wholly different tribe of Minions, basically opening the door for more narrative possibilities by positing that the Minions we associate with Gru aren’t the only ones, and they can actually have their own adventures. This corrects another annoyance I’ve had with the property, stating upfront that the Minions will actually be the stars of a Minions movie, for once. This isn’t about retconning Gru’s history or coming up with some convoluted way to shoehorn them into the main narrative. This is just going to be its own plot. Halle-fucking-lujah! There’s a little bit of recycling in how she narrates the evolution of the group’s search for a “big boss,” similar to Steve Coogan, but this isn’t meant to be a parody of a nature documentary, more a history of this particular mob and their journey to the film’s main timeframe of the 1920s. Also, rather than using previous bosses as one-off sight gags, we get to spend some time with our leads, develop them a bit, and come up with some more high-concept comedy that still emphasize how their own hyperactive fuckery is what lands them in trouble in the first place.

The film centers on a core quartet. The first and most important is James, who is ostracized for caring more about drawing and telling stories than finding a boss. He’s eventually befriended by Henry, who really enjoys his creativity. The duo becomes a trio with the addition of Ed, a deaf mute who communicates via Minionese Sign Language, which is a nice touch. The leader of the group is Dick, who’s… a dick. He’s constantly berating James and Henry, and he only cares about what we’re meant to assume is an instinctual need to become subservient to an evil master, which is contrary to any form of evolutionary logic, but that’s always been a problem with the series.

While working for a wizard, Henry and James’s, shall we say, curiosity, leads to them using a spell book against the explicit orders of their erstwhile boss, summoning a monster. They’re able to undo the spell (literally by saying “Command Zed,” the best joke in a Minions movie since the first one referred to Bob as a “bald, jaundiced child”), but the damage is done, so the tribe must move on yet again, much to Dick’s chagrin. Ed keeps the book as a souvenir, though, setting the stage for future tomfoolery.

Languishing in the desert, Dick notices a robbery in progress, with a posse of cowboys chasing a bandit. He rallies the troops to help their potential new boss, only for the situation to be eventually revealed as a film shoot. The director, named Max (they actually got Christoph Waltz for a Minions movie?!?!?!?!), is initially furious, but when the studio heads (both voiced by Jeff Bridges; WE HAVE FOUR OSCARS IN THIS CAST) find the antics hilarious, Max instead hires the group, turning them into instant silent film stars. The Minions enjoy a brief spell as celebrities, until the transition to talking pictures exposes their lack of acting talent, to say nothing of their inability to speak English, and they are summarily fired.

How this wasn’t an instantly recognizable issue is definitely a massive plot hole, but for the first time in a while, I found myself not bothered by it, mostly because everything around and leading up to it is actually handled quite well. We get what is honestly an even more true-to-life look at Silent-era Hollywood than Babylon, and with significantly less elephant shit. There are myriad references to the landmark films and scenes of the time, including some silliness that replicates classic bits from Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. These aren’t just “hey this existed” nods like so many other lazy works, but rather hilariously fractured film history lessons that land because there’s an actual basis in the reality of this world to make them work. This is what something like Family Guy could do at the height of its powers, and I’m amazed at how well they’re constructed. Further, once the Minions gain some success, Max really warms up to them, mentoring James in his own ambitions and encouraging him to let his creativity flow to make something new and unique, because cinema is an essential art that has to be a shared collective experience in a theatre. Obviously, from a meta standpoint, such an assertion from any Universal property – especially this one – is laughable on its face, but there’s this odd earnestness to Waltz’s delivery that almost makes you believe it, far more so than four years and counting of Nicole Kidman lying to our faces about AMC literally improving movies.

Once the group is sacked, our heroes split off for most of the remainder of the picture, with Dick having had quite enough of James, Henry, and Ed’s lack of desire for an overlord. He takes the others and meets what appears to be a nerdy man in a robot suit named Dort (Jesse Eisenberg) who claims to be an alien preparing to invade Earth, but who eventually shelves his “plan” when he meets a perky suffragette named Debbie (Zoey Deutch, giving us an unexpected Zombieland: Double Tap reunion) who finds him cute. I normally wouldn’t mention this B-plot, but it’s far funnier than it has any right to be, and its resolution offers a twist that younger viewers definitely won’t see coming, though the adults certainly will.

As for the others, we get into the final thrust of the main narrative. James gets the idea to make a monster movie, using the spell book to summon Goomi, a diminutive, green, alien-like creature with mouth tendrils, voiced by Trey Parker. He’s another unlikely veteran of this series, having voiced main baddie Balthazar Bratt in Despicable Me 3, a role he admits he took so that he could be in a cartoon his then four-year-old daughter could watch. However, unlike Janney, he’s not instantly recognized, because back then he was basically doing an exaggerated version of his normal voice (think Randy Marsh), whereas here it’s far more high-pitched and gravelly, closer to his flappy-headed Saddam Hussein bit. With Goomi’s help, James is ready to call upon even more eldritch horrors to make his magnum opus. To my eternal surprise, hilarity ensues.

I’ve probably given away too much of the story, but at the same time, the flick’s been out for two weeks now, and it’s not like a Minions movie, even a good one, isn’t predictable as hell. Still, there’s a lot more to what I’ve divulged than what these basic descriptions suggest, and it really is funny. More importantly, it feels disciplined. There’s an actual emphasis on narrative progression aided by jokes, rather than jokes driving the entire affair. The characters get real development, and while there is a third act conflict, it’s caused by Dick being himself rather than an ally who betrays the others, and it’s still quickly resolved without devolving into tired cliché. Hell, even the butt/poop/fart jokes are kept to a respectful minimum. There’s one in the opening segment, and a couple more once we get to Hollywood, but it’s far from the fecal parade we normally get. I won’t say the comedy has matured, per se, but you can tell that Coffin and co-writer Brian Lynch aren’t just taking the easy way out anymore. These gags have thought behind them. I don’t expect the youngsters in the audience to start researching Charlie Chaplin after seeing this, but the jokes are smart enough that I can’t discount the possibility.

There are definitely some glaring problems here and there, a symptom of the larger series just not caring about logic or continuity. The chase scene that introduces the Minions to Max is literally impossible, even by the cartoony standards of this series. The fact that the group follows Dick after they’re fired despite everyone pretty much agreeing that he’s an irritating asshole makes no sense (you could easily have Dick leave on his own, find Dort, and lure the others back to his side without sacrificing anything intellectually). I think the biggest is that the transition to “talkies” came in 1927, and yet Debbie and her associates are still protesting to get women the vote despite the 19th Amendment being ratified in 1920. Clearly the dynamic between Dort and Debbie was more important than fact-checking. Again, this is nothing new with the franchise, and it’s annoying that the team couldn’t do the simple rewrite to fix it.

But unlike the rest of the entries in this sub-series, there’s so much quality here that you don’t mind these faux pas so much. Because again, it comes down to the basic decisions that skyrocket this picture to the top of the overall franchise (save for the original Despicable Me). By detaching it from the other six films, this one is unencumbered by all the nonsense of its brethren, and it gets to take advantage of the possibilities of being its own thing. And by actually putting the Minions in the spotlight without weighing them down with their duties to Scarlet or Gru, the four we focus on can actually feel like individuals. If you put the trio from 2015’s Minions in front of me, I’d be able to tell who was who simply because I’ve seen the flick more than once and have a decent memory (the cry of “KING BOB!” also helps narrow things down). But with James, Henry, Ed, and Dick, I feel for the first time that I can recognize them as distinct characters. Once Coffin et al accomplished that, everything else just sort of fell into place. The gags made sense. The nods to old Hollywood felt more like tributes than denigrations. The plot actually moved. A completely superfluous side story was somehow compelling and delightfully madcap.

This is everything a Minions movie should have been from the beginning. I’m certain that once we get back to the main group, it’ll all go right back into the toilet. Enjoy this high while it lasts.

Grade: B+

Join the conversation in the comments below! What film should I review next? What’s the most surprisingly good franchise installment you’ve seen? Seriously, how hard did you laugh at “BEHOLD DORT’S ROOMMATE!”? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!