There are basically two ways to look at Minions: either with total contempt over these cravenly lucrative commercial products that are dumbing kids down, or with mindless glee, surrendering to the little yellow dudes. Buckling up for “Minions & Monsters,” the third film of the wildly successful “Despicable Me” spinoff franchise, it is far easier to go with glee.
After all, Minions are ultimately no great evil. Kids will always be inundated with lowbrow entertainment, and if you ask parents of toddlers, they’re likely happy enough to have a reliable distraction on hand.
And what the Minions have done — what ultimately is the source of any ire and is also the very reason for their bankability — is totally embody what no other mass children’s programming has before, at least as effectively. Namely, they mimic the true essence of a kid’s sensibility: The art of hyperactivity. The gibberish talk, the tweaking physicality, the love for bumbling slapstick — it’s a kindergarten classroom with an eight-figure budget.
All the more surprising, then, that this third installment, directed by Pierre Coffin (who also voices the Minions), is far and away the best of the bunch. But it also breaks away from comparison altogether, ushering the franchise, for better or worse, into a new era of ubiquity.
In a decade and a half, the Minions iconography has become so total, their appeal so simple, that they fit somewhat seamlessly into any setting or story. Like any fictional property that has become an ingrained cultural symbol, this latest is not so much the third Minions movie, as it is the latest Minions adventure.
The franchise had already leaned into this anthology-like approach in the previous two films: The Minions Take London in the first one, the Minions in the Hippie Era in the second. But tonally and structurally, “Minions & Monsters” is the one to truly realize (or exploit) the narrative freedom of its world domination. Here, it’s Minions in Prehistoric Times, but also Minions Take Hollywood, and also Minions Take On Aliens.
The result is shaggy and meandering, but also surprisingly uncynical, while allowing room for more real jokes and imagination. The movie introduces a new set of characters — goodbye Kevin, Bob and Stuart, hello Henry and James (an intended irony naming Minion protagonists after one of the seminal novelists of the English language?) — and takes us through a tour of the Minions’ early days. Then they land in Hollywood, unwittingly become movie stars, are run out of town, try to make their own feature, conjure monsters and meet an alien.
It’s a lot, but the film punches things up with enough gags that don’t simply resort to the Minions’ trademark gibberish-and-mishap humor. And even as it dips into about a dozen different worlds, it rarely feels haphazard nor frenetically diversionary. The kids will be sucked in, but the parents might even join the babble, too.
Minions & Monsters
Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters.
