Sometime last month, I was sitting in a fancy auditorium watching a 'children's movie'--with more than a dozen kids (and a few adults) at a birthday screening for my 9-year-old. It was an animated feature, wonderfully imagined and realised, and perfectly suited to the 3D format we watched it in. Laughs and titters emanated from the seats around me. And yet I'm certain that I appreciated Minions & Monsters more than any of the younglings in the room.
Because apart from being perfectly enjoyable on its own terms, this film is also a reverential, homage-drenched fever dream for anyone who loves deep cinema history. The plot has the squawking yellow Minions stumbling onto a movie shoot in silent-era Hollywood, getting employed in films, and having to negotiate the transition to the sound era. And this is rich ground for many cinematic references.
