Pierre Coffin would like a little respect — and maybe an Oscar. So would James, the Minion hero of Coffin’s new movie, Minions & Monsters, and they’re both going to go about it in the same way, by making a movie about Hollywood. Flattery will get you everywhere, especially in this town.
While he has continued to lend his vocal skills, he has returned as director with a new Minions vehicle that’s a bit more high-minded than the usual fare, both a love letter to Old Hollywood and a lightly spiky critique.
The Academy loves to reward films about the noble quest of making art, especially movies, because who wouldn’t want to see themselves reflected onscreen?
Coffin may be banking on that narcissism, while simultaneously giving the American film industry a light, good-humoured flambé.
But he’s also legitimising his Minions, placing them, Forrest Gump-style, in the lineage of cinema history. What is a Minion if not a silent movie star like Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton gone through a few iterations?
Coffin literally places his star Minions, Henry and James, in a movie museum next to George Lucas, where Allison Janney voices a tour guide who provides the framing device for this historical yarn.
As she tells a group of unruly kids, in the old days, Minion tribes roamed the planet searching for evil masters to serve — no wonder they ended up in Hollywood, right?
It’s a heady, wild, decadent and debauched time, until the advent of sound. Much like Lina Lamont in Singin’ in the Rain, the Minions can’t make the leap, and end up out on the street.
Henry, James and Ed pursue their dream of making James’ monster movie, while the rest of the gang team up with Dort (Jesse Eisenberg), a friendly alien robot who’d like to take over the planet.
Big dreamer James is like any aspiring young filmmaker — blindly driven to the point of ignoring every red flag that comes his way.
He and his pals want to conjure up a kaiju from their old wizard’s spell book for the movie, but end up manifesting scheming monster Goomi (Trey Parker), who becomes a classic smarmy producer talking out of both sides of his mouth.
The monster pals Goomi summons are liable to destroy everything, including a giant, all-consuming orange blob covered in eyeballs named Irene (Eye-rene?).
Minions & Monsters is a lightly barbed cautionary tale about the collective (hordes of brave little Minions) coming together to protect a certain way of life, and a certain way of making movies.
It might be represented by a world that’s now a hundred or so years old, but it’s an era that we romanticize nevertheless.
For this film lover, it’s probably the first actual capital G Good Minions movie, but, there’s a first time for everything. Always expect the unexpected, especially when it comes to the Minions. – Tribune News Service
Summary:
A manic love letter to Old Hollywood
