On the opening night of this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival, after an awards ceremony and a brief cameo by Guillermo del Toro (who shouted, without a microphone, “F–k AI!”), Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters” made its world premiere. This makes sense – Illumination’s animation studio is in Paris, and they’re as close as Annecy comes to hometown heroes. But the premiere, on the first night of a vaunted festival, also made sense once you watched the movie. It’s a charming, brightly animated love letter to Hollywood’s heyday and a celebration of the moviegoing experience. It wasn’t quite one of the world’s most celebrated directors yelling “F–k AI!” But it was closer than you’d probably imagine.
The movie is built around a framing device — a tour guide escorting a group of film fans through an … exhibit? … museum? … backlot tour? (it’s a little unclear) — that finds itself in front of a statue of two minions, James and Henry.
The tour group knows of minions. How could they not? In the 16 years since the first “Despicable Me” burst onto the screen, the minions have been codified and cloned; they’ve been the basis for a truly impressive array of consumer products, appeared in Universal theme parks around the world and inspired their own spinoff film franchise.
But these two minions? Never heard of them.
Thus begins the story of Henry and James, and a bunch of other minions, too. They were, as many minions were at the beginning of time, not very good at finding an evil overlord to worship. (The minions refer to him, in their decidedly minion-y way, as the “big boss.”) In fact, they have a habit of accidentally murdering their villains. But after a mishap involving a cowboy film, they wind up in Hollywood. At first, they are a sensation, swooned over by a pair of overweight studio heads (voiced by Jeff Bridges) and a bullish director (Christoph Waltz), but soon strike out on their own. James, you see, is a true artist. He has the soul of a poet. And if you get him confused with Henry, that’s probably OK, too.
“Minions & Monsters,” much like its title, is very much a film of two halves. The first half serves as an oddly reverential celebration of Old Hollywood — not only of early silent comedians, whom the minions obviously owe a huge debt to, but of everything from “Citizen Kane” (which got one of the night’s biggest laughs) to “Casablanca” to drive-in sci-fi cheapies (the best fake title? “They Came From the Stars to Hit You With a Frying Pan”). The transition from silent films to talkies is addressed in a bit that cribs from “Singin’ in the Rain,” and there’s even a party sequence that owes a debt to Damien Chazelle’s recent, underrated “Babylon,” which found similar pleasures in early Hollywood debauchery.
There is something special – dare we say moving – about the way that “Minions & Monsters” engages with the cinema that came before it. The movie opens with the modern Universal logo and then rewinds to the studio’s 1920s logo; even the Illumination logo features its flagship characters (yes, the minions) in a rubber-hose variation. (They might as well be hanging out with Steamboat Willie.) An opening title sequence also splices the minions into actual classic films. If you’ve ever wondered what they would look like hanging around Georges Méliès’ 1902 breakthrough “A Trip to the Moon,” well, here’s your chance.
The entire thing feels alive in a way that the “Despicable Me” franchise, as a whole, hasn’t in a while. What makes the series fun is that it is usually made up of gangbusters comedic moments that more or less add up to a cohesive and entertaining whole. Even when they don’t entirely hang together, there’s something to admire about a franchise that is so intensely gag-focused. Each new movie has a wrinkle or minor complication, both in the mainline “Despicable Me” franchise and in the “Minions” films (this is the third, following 2022’s “Minions: The Rise of Gru”), but you also know, more or less, what to expect.
What makes “Minions & Monsters” so refreshing is that you aren’t exactly sure where it’s headed next and what it’s going to tackle. At about the midway point, the movie shifts into more familiar territory, with the minions summoning an evil blob demon with a bunch of eyes and having to try and figure out how to defeat it. Big things crashing into buildings is a staple of Minionland. You can almost feel Pierre Coffin, the director of “Minions & Monsters” and the voice of the minions, bumping up against the status quo and looking to subvert those expectations. He has been around since the first “Despicable Me,” directing the first three films in the main franchise as well as the first “Minions” film. Nobody knows those weird little Tic Tacs better than him. He knows what works and he knows what doesn’t.
Even when it feels like something you might have seen before, the heart of “Minions & Monsters” shines through and there are enough curveballs to keep you entertained. What, for example, does the side plot of the minions following a guy dressed as a B-movie robot (Jesse Eisenberg) have to do with anything? And could Trey Parker’s Lovecraftian ghoulie Goomi get any cuter?
“Minions & Monsters” builds to an open-hearted tribute to the power of the communal moviegoing experience that is unexpectedly emotional and makes the film feel like it could be the best in the franchise, perhaps since the very first “Despicable Me.” It also goes to show how elastic these characters are and how, when applied to the right narrative and thematic concerns, they can have resonance beyond countless pieces of merchandise and theme park attractions. “Minions & Monsters” is purely enjoyable in a big, big way. Who’d have thought?
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