'Minions & Monsters' is a daffy summer comedy over 100 years in the making

8 min Click here to listen to this article Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! Print 0:00 0:00 1x This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred 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. Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! 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. French animator Pierre Coffin created the Minions and still voices them. For the new movie, he wanted to pay homage to Hollywood’s silent clowns. I’ll admit, I snorted the first time I saw a TikTok of teens gussied 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 qu

'Minions & Monsters' is a daffy summer comedy over 100 years in the making

Key takeaways

Also covered by

'Minions & Monsters' is a daffy summer comedy over 100 years in the making

Key takeaways

Also covered by

More in local