Minions & Monsters reviews – smart ideas come down in the same | Movies in movies

The yellow, cylindrical, all-clothed creatures known as Minions first appeared in the faithful henchmen Steve Carell of the villainous Gru in Illumination’s Despicable Me, whose history of trying Gru to steal the moon with the help of three orphan girls. Along the way, Gru learns love, the girls grow up, and the Minions – well, the Minions are always the same. They are beautiful, defenseless and ignorant. He speaks in “Minionese”, a gibberish mishmash of languages without limits it’s a generation with an almost dadaist devotion to babbling. The results of Despicable Me, over the past 16 years, have been consistent very high live-action franchise, in part due to the viral success of Minions.

I am Friends & Monsters, the seventh entry in the franchise and the third film in the Minion-centered spin-off series, returning director Pierre Coffin reprises a major part of 2015’s Minions. Like the movie, Minions & Monsters begins with a tribe of Minions searching for their despicable boss. But instead of ending up banished to an ice cave, this time the Minions find themselves riding a train off the tracks to the Bright Brothers studio in late 1920s Los Angeles, on the edge of Hollywood’s silent era.

Minions & Monsters is Coffin’s “love letter to the cinema”, a paean to the medium that boasts the history of Hollywood – where the Minions have fallen in many places like La Ciotat’s train, we see the iconic models of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Sam of Dooley Wilson. The story is presented by Olivia (Allison Janney), a present-day studio director who teaches a group of guests about the Minions’ famous place in Hollywood history.

With this initial setup, Coffin reaches a cinematic high point. The silly fun of seeing the Minion represents the moon of Méliès aside, the smartest move of the film is to make the stars of the Minions in silence, directed by the German Max (Christoph Waltz) and see the ambition of the Bright Brothers (both voiced by Jeff Warner Bridges). In this part of the film, the slapstick gags are filled with a fun homage to the comedy of Chaplin and Keaton. As soon as sound technology is introduced, the Minions are kicked out of the studio, because despite their best efforts, they can’t speak English.

If the movie had kept its clever plot – the Minions have to fight to keep their place in Hollywood – it would have been simple which is the mark of good children’s movies. But in an effort to both lead the Minions on a new, smarter path and entertain their random expectations, Coffin bites off more than he can chew. As a result, Minions & Monsters sadly circles back to where it started.

If 2015’s Minions tried to differentiate the personalities of Kevin, Bob and Stuart (voiced by Coffin, as all Minions are), Minions & Monsters represents Illumination’s first attempt to imbue the Minions with pathos. The protagonist James’ desire to make a horror film drives the plot and causes conflict with his best friend, Henry, whose admiration for James’ artistic spirit turns to frustration when James loses interest. Henry and James are members of a tribe connected to the Minion’s main mission, which is to serve the common man. They are hated because they work on something that Minions are not supposed to have: ego.

A great idea, and it probably fixed the biggest problem with the Minions franchise, which is its lack of imagination. But before long, the Minions are back to their old ways, and the second and third acts – filled with strange characters and nonsense that include an old spellbook from a fallen master; robots; and, if you can believe it, the women’s rights movement – is failing to unite.

The plot of the film is that, in an attempt to make a monster movie, the Minions find themselves in trouble. A similar mockery marks the opening, which suggests that the Minions deserve a place in the annals of Hollywood history with other record-breakers, such as George Lucas (playing himself) and E.T. But there is something sad about the expansion that this film takes from these issues, without realizing it, without educating its young audience. At the end of the film, all understanding of things is lost: the Minions can save the day as heroes. Shouldn’t they serve a bad person?

A lot of confusion about what Minions really are and -Cinco Paul, co-writer on Despicable Me, is on board he stopped The idea of ​​the Minions franchise as a nomadic tribe – shows the lack of conviction that drives the Minions movies. For fat bags of Light, it makes no difference at all; The box itself said spoken about the cost of the commercial business has taken its money from Minions. Once used by Gru to fulfill a distant dream, the Minions are now mainly used by the Light to make money. In fact, in this sense, they continue to achieve their goal.