Minions & Monsters
- Jul 13
- 3 min read
A noisy mess of a misfire that's almost saved by Trey Parker's genius voice work, MINIONS & MONSTERS isn't fun enough for kids, interesting enough for adults or for that matter, entertaining for anyone.
We had four adults and 8 kids from 4 to 9 years old, a viewing dozen. It was unanimous, no one liked it.
At all.
And we're Minions and Despicable Me fans!
The film starts with a tour of a modern day studio, with Tour Guide Olivia (Allison Janney, given NOTHING to do) leading a group through the backlot. George Lucas is in a glass cage (kind of funny in a real cameo) and we see Neo from the Matrix. Kind of strange since that's a Warner Bros movie and this is a Universal film, but whatever...
When no one in the crowd knows who the two Minions are that are captured in a large statue, Olivia tells the tale of the two Minions who launched the Studio back in the 1920's.
With more than a few references to Damien Chazelle's "Babylon" I started looking at all the kids in my row in the theater. No smiles, just staring at the screen waiting for something to happen. More than a couple confused looks...
The film then becomes an episodic tale of the Minions and their desire to serve a big bad guy, everyone from a giant Cyclops to two twin brothers Frank and Elwood, who run the giant Hollywood studio. The twins are well voiced by Jeff Bridges, who's clearly having fun creating two very different brothers with big box office success in mind.
Christoph Waltz voices Max, the diminutive Hollywood director who first discovers the Minions when they destroy half of Hollywood in the best visual sequence in the film. It's a modern day Keystone Kops chase gone absolutely mad. The animation is spectacular and the action builds to mass destruction by train, car and many, many Minions.
The tiny creatures want to make a big budget horror film with them battling monsters and manage to conjure up a doozy in the tiny green Goomi.
Trey Parker has served up one of the best animation voice stables of all-time, voicing half the characters in the relentlessly hilarious "South Park". He commits 100% to Goomi and brings a real energy and sadly missing spark to the movie, but it feels like hours before he shows up!
I looked down the aisle at all the kids we brought. Two are just staring at their popcorn, one is doing complete flips in her seat and four have left with my wife to the bathroom and were so bored they never came back.....
Ok where were we?
Goomi's got access to some seriously giant monsters who want to eat the planet, not just Hollywood. Writer/Director Pierre Coffin falls into the Steven Spielberg "1941" trap, thinking that manic and LOUD= funny. Just as in that film, it doesn't.
But at least 1941 had enough jaw dropping action sequences and laughs to keep things rolling.
Meanwhile a silver robot named Dort (Jesse Eisenberg) shows up and seems determined to have someone take him to his leader. That plot starts dueling with the Goomi Monster plot and its like having Cheeseburgers and Lasagna for lunch. Do we need both? How are these two going to work together?
For a kids movie, this thing requires way too much work.
This behemoth just lumbers and lumbers for 90 minutes that feel like 120.
Has anything this frantic ever felt this boring?
Coffin has lost the plot.
The massive finale is okay, the animation remains stellar and the action is wild, but it plays as flat as the rest of the film, strangely failing to connect on any level.
Visually stunning and dull as hell, MINIONS & MONSTERS is a complete waste of time, entertaining neither kids or adults.
The little ones that bailed halfway through had the right idea.
I'll give it a D.
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