Minions & Monsters

Give points to the franchise for not just doing the same-old for its 7th iteration, hearkening back to classic movies for inspiration as the lovable yellow ijits dive into kiddie-friendly slapstick.

When movie franchises get to their 7th film, they tend to be phoning it in. They stop concerning themselves with original ideas and just ladle up more of what made the previous movies a bunch of money. Heck, I’ve seen some reach that point by the second picture.

(*Cough* *cough* “Men in Black.”)

Give points to the Despicable Me/Minions gang for not just doing the same-old for “Minions & Monsters,” the 7th iteration from that corner of the cinematic universe. Instead, it hearkens back to classic movies for inspiration as the lovable yellow ijits dive into kiddie-friendly slapstick.

And make no mistake, these movies are for children — small children, in fact. There’s still enough to vibrate the funny bones of adults, too, but I’d say the ideal audience counts its birthdays in single digits.

Director Pierre Coffin, who co-wrote the screenplay with Brian Lynch, sets the mood from the opening seconds as the Universal Pictures logo spins backward in time to its silent-era film roots, and some black-and-white minions do a little “Steamboat Willie” type of pantomime. Coffin, who has been with the franchise since the start and also provides the hyper, chirpy nonsense-speak of the various Minions himself, would seem to have created a steady gig for himself until he dies or hangs it up.

The story is… well, you don’t go to Minions movies for the story. It’s all about goofy hijinks, toilet humor, PG-rated violence and embarrassing scenarios where people lose their clothes or otherwise endure mortification — until it’s somebody else’s turn, generally a few seconds later.

By now you know the creed of the Minions: they attach themselves to the most evil villain they can find — “bigboss” in their parlance — as if genetically programmed to subservience. Of course, they usually screw things up and aren’t very evil themselves, and in fact seem more geared toward creating mischief and amusing themselves than suffering.

The framing story here is a portrait of Old Hollywood itself, which in the film’s mythology the Minions themselves had a key role in creating. Specifically James and Henry, who were seen as something of useless layabouts by the other Minions, preferring to draw and tell stories.

While traveling the globe looking for a new bigboss — as a couple of very funny opening vignettes detail the outcome of some previous ones — they stumble into a movie shoot in circa 1927 California. Of course they turn everything into a disaster, riding a runaway steam locomotive right down Hollywood Boulevard. But it attracts the attention of a director named Max (Christoph Waltz), who casts them in his next film, and soon they’re an overnight sensation and the biggest stars in town.

James has ambitions, encouraged by Max, to direct on his own, and has a grand idea for a picture of them fighting off horrendous monsters. To supply them they turn to a book of sorcery (inherited from another long-ago, unfortunate bigboss) and summon the scariest looking monster, a Cthulhu-like octopus creature, though he turns out to be a shrimpy little guy named Goomi with a squeaky voice (supplied by Trey Parker of “South Park” fame).

Goomi isn’t quite as helpful as he appears to be, intent on world domination with the help of two other hulking monster pals, and the ultimate goal of summoning Irene, a massive all-consuming orange blog with infinite eyes.

The Minions find an unlikely ally in Dort (Jesse Eisenberg), who everyone takes to be just an eccentric guy dressed in a robot costume, but actually he’s an alien here to conquer Earth himself, a la “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Instead he falls in love with a spunky suffragette, Debbie (Zoey Deutch), and rallies to the side of the humans.

(Women actually got the vote in 1920, but we’ll not quibble.)

There’s plenty of top-end voice talent. Jeff Bridges provides it for both of the Bright Brothers, a Warner Bros.-esque duo of immensely powerful and proportioned studio chiefs. Allison Janney is the eager Hollywood tour guide-slash-narrator. George Lucas even pops up for some self-poking fun.

The parts I loved most were the call-outs and homages to early motions pictures. For me it became a game of seeing what references I could spot: Buster Keaton in “Safety Last,” Charlie Chaplin in “Modern Times,” Georges Méliès’ “A Trip to the Moon” and dozens more. You’ll see the Creature from the Black Lagoon in the background or the robot Maria from Fritz Lang’ “Metropolis.”

Make no mistake: this is heartfelt entertainment for youngsters. But it’s also a movie deliriously in love with the movies. In a lot of ways the Minions could belong to any era — somehow seeing them appear in silent black-and-white pictures does not seem at all out of place. Though the yellow does really make them pop.