Picture a black-and-white shot of a wintry mansion where a Minion lies dying in an upstairs bedroom. A snow globe in his hand tumbles to the ground. The Minion croaks his last words: “Oh, poop.”
That scene is in “Minions & Monsters,” a delightful dingbat homage to Tinseltown set during the transition from silents to sound. The Minion is a movie star flubbing that leap. You, a person of cinematic erudition, may be chuckling at the truth of how hard it was for early actors to speak dialogue — the Minions babble in their own made-up language — or at the delirious inaccuracy of setting “Citizen Kane” a decade and a half too soon. The children in the crowd are howling at the creature’s potty mouth. Regardless, director Pierre Coffin has the entire audience laughing. That’s classic Hollywood.
Coffin, the co-creator and voice of the Minions, was born in France to Franco-Indonesian intellectuals who only turned on the TV for old movies. As such, he’s a step out of sync with contemporary kids’ filmmakers who tend to chase trends or resurrect the retro toys of their own youth. Coffin doesn’t pander. He trusts in telling fast, funny, anarchic stories that reward close attention — an ancient formula that feels new simply because not that many others are doing it.
Like the first silent performers, the animated Minions are mutely expressive ids designed to play like gangbusters around the globe. Their frantic energy would fit in right alongside Mack Sennett’s pie-throwers and the primitive animated shorts of Felix the Cat. An even earlier rewind that opens the film flashes back all the way to Eadweard Muybridge and the Lumière brothers, then progresses on to Georges Méliès 1902 dazzler, “A Trip to the Moon,” whose flailing slapstick aliens could be the Minions’ second cousins.
Clearly, these influences have been on Coffin’s mind since long before there was a Minions sticker on half the minivans at school drop-off. Here, he’s pulling back the curtain to show kids exactly where their magic comes from. It’s the climax of a trick Coffin has been working on since “Minions,” his billion-dollar 2015 blockbuster (co-directed by Kyle Balda), steeped itself in imagery from “Lawrence of Arabia” and “The Great Dictator,” etching grooves in young viewers’ minds so they might grow up to recognize and appreciate the originals, just as “The Simpsons” and “The Muppets” and Bugs Bunny’s Rossini fetish trained earlier generations.
I’ll admit, I snorted the first time I saw a TikTok of teensgussied up in suits to see a Minions movie. But after watching “Minions & Monsters” make nods to “Metropolis” and “Casablanca,” I understand. Coffin and co-screenwriter Brian Lynch’s nearly nonverbal comedy treats today’s youth with the same respect that Charlie Chaplin did their great-grandparents. On a subconscious level, its fans are returning the favor.
Don’t stress about not seeing the previous two “Minions” entries or the four “Despicable Me” movies they spun off from. In short: The Minions are an immortal yet childlike tribe of yellow critters continually seeking to serve an evil master. They look and act like pills. Blundering onto early Los Angeles film sets, they can’t tell which baddies are real or fiction. Playfully, neither can we. A clanky robot named Dort (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg), discovered outside a proto Comic-Con, claims to be a world conqueror from outer space but lives in a one-room hovel with a roommate. (Despite the engulfing lunacy, the zoned-out roommate is himself an authentic depiction of the kind of guy an L.A. transplant moves in with via Craigslist.)
The silent era had plenty of actual villains, but a PG movie isn’t going to barge onto the set of “The Birth of a Nation,” let alone a casting couch. Instead, Coffin sketches his idea of a Hollywood creep, the phony let’s-do-lunch schmoozer, with Jeff Bridges voicing a set of twin studio moguls who play bad boss/backhanded boss. One brother does the firing, the other waves goodbye, cooing, “We hope we can still be friends who never speak to each other.”
One starry-eyed Minion, though, James, vows to mount a monster movie with real monsters. (The Minions prefer prosaic monikers; others are pointedly named Steven, Quentin, Erich, Federico and Ridley, as in Spielberg, Tarantino, Von Stroheim, Fellini and Scott.) James is every ambitious director threatening to topple this town in a narcissistic quest to create the ultimate special effects epic. Instead of a budget rampaging out of control, it’s the beasts themselves, particularly Irene, a stunning creation that resembles a glop of marmalade with eyeballs bubbling up to the surface. The translucence of Irene’s topmost layer is gorgeously done; so, too, are her insides, which recall the tornado in “A Wizard of Oz” trapped in quivering gelatin.
The imagery in “Minions & Monsters” can be ingenious, like the galumphing tentacles on an oversize squid or the close-up shot that goes inside a director’s megaphone to see his tongue waggling at the screen. Yet the cinematography rarely chooses to draw attention to itself in the moment, energetically pulling us along to the next sight gag and the next, trusting that we’ll applaud the details later on an umpteenth rewatch. Taking a cue from nickelodeon piano players, composer John Powell steers the mood with a vibrantly eclectic score of sprightly ragtime, violin pathos and popcorn crescendos.
The setting of the main story is a mash-up of historical references from the teens to the fifties with the Minions colliding with suffragists, prohibitionists, Roaring Twenties revelers, Keystone Cops, Oscar presenters, film noir set designers and, in spillover pratfall attack, Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. Not including Mary Pickford or Mabel Normand is a missed opportunity — they were funny, too. Shirley Temple gets passing recognition, only via her namesake drink when the Minions visit a nightclub and sip virgin cocktails loaded with cherries. At least in the background, Coffin reminds us that women also worked behind the scenes from the beginning. Likewise, the main director whom the Minions befriend, Max (Christoph Waltz), has a European accent, a derby-tip to the industry’s immigrant roots.
Hollywood was founded by daredevils, from the cowboys who galloped here to become stuntmen, to the small-town girls who bucked the pressure to get married and moved west to chase a one-in-a-million dream. My favorite depictions of this city know its real history is too cuckoo to capture sincerely; straight reenactments make the production of 35mm masterpieces look as piddly as Shrinky Dinks. Yet “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” got close to the truth by tapping into L.A.’s chaotic trifecta of of zealotry, naïveté and cynicism.
“Minions & Monsters” doesn’t aspire to accuracy — at heart, it’s a just a romp — but it nails the first two qualities and rubs shoulders with the latter, say when a scheming green meanie (Trey Parker) pretends to help James direct his masterpiece, assuring him, “This is your project — I don’t want to step on any toes.” Parker’s voice is too familiar from “South Park” to disappear into the character and he’s honestly not trying that hard to bother. But in his delivery of that line, you can hear him make fun of the studio executives he’s tangled with himself, now that too much of Hollywood has been conquered by conglomerates who don’t completely understand his humor, let alone Coffin’s.
Those MBA types might recognize a “Rosebud” reference when they see it, but back in the day, they’d have probably allied with the aggrieved tycoon William Randolph Hearst trying to run Orson Welles out of town. Still, Coffin is fine inviting them into the big tent with the rest of us, if only to show where the Hollywood blockbuster machine can find its next gear. Go back to basics, his film says. Entertain, invigorate and charm. Not every movie has to be “Citizen Kane.” Just get everyone laughing.
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