After my previous complaints about the walking yellow pills, I never expected to watch any part of the spinoff series. What persuaded me? My nephew and niece invited me. I'll take almost any excuse to spend time with them.
As narrated by a tour guide (Allison Janney), most of the story takes place in early Hollywood. A tribe of Minions (all voiced by director Pierre Coffin) in search of a new bad guy to follow unwittingly crashes a set and wins the hearts of the producers (both Jeff Bridges), who cast them in many movies with the same director (Christoph Waltz). Alas, their inability to stick to English for long makes them flop with the advent of talkies. The most artistically minded Minion, James, decides to make an indie horror. Using a previous boss's magic book, he summons a talking monster (Trey Parker), who brings others on board (Phil LaMarr and Bobby Moynihan). Of course, they didn't show up to be actual actors....
Nobody told me there would be lots of spoofs of classic cinema, from A Trip to the Moon to The Day the Earth Stood Still, as if to appeal to me personally. I'm pretty sure my nephew and niece have seen no live-action pictures older than Star Wars. Even their parents didn't recognize many references. But hey, if a Dogman book can pay homage to Metropolis...
A few other Minions are worth knowing by name. James's closest friend is Henry, and the two of them are accidentally responsible for most losses of bosses. (Creativity sure doesn't make James any wiser than the rest.) Ed has trouble hearing and communicates in signing, which may be appreciated from an inclusion standpoint and which I find a welcome respite from the semi-Spanish helium gibberish. Why he doesn't retain as much honor in Hollywood as Henry is beyond me. Then there's Dick, the stick-waving stick-in-the-mud who leads the Minions when they don't have a boss and haven't had enough of him. I won't bother naming or describing any humans; they're not the selling point.
Nor will I go into the details of the monsters, but their style is more typical of HP Lovecraft than of traditional monster movies. The climax would be downright terrifying if it weren't in a ludicrous flick where everyone was played for laughs. Only villains ever get killed, the Minions appear completely immortal, and even the decapitation of a human is completely bloodless.
I've discovered more questions I'd ask about the Minions if I thought I'd ever get answers. Why do they keep seeking out the most evil creatures to follow when they themselves don't seem that evil in nature? And if they're so loyal, why do they sometimes break their boss's rules as soon as he turns his back? Clearly, they're geared toward kids too young to seek reasons for silliness.
Sure enough, my nephew and niece rather liked it, if only for the slapstick. Me, I found it largely as I expected: lowbrow and often predictable but watchable. It'll take another juvenile invitation to get me to another entry.
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