On demand: "Minions & Monsters"

They cannot be stopped, and I still don't quite see the appeal of them. The latest Despicable Me offshoot, Minions & Monsters, has been conceived in large part as an alternative history of the seventh art, celebrating in passing the creativity of all those who've converted a scrappy handful of character sketches into a lasting and profitable cinematic empire. After clever opening credits - the highpoint here, retconning the Minions into flickering Muybridge and Méliès frames - we're met by a Universal Studios tour guide (with the voice of Allison Janney) who proceeds to regale her party of overexcitable children and accompanying adults with the legend of Henry and James, two Minion outcasts whose extracurricular doodling first brings them trouble, then formative roles in Hollywood's interwar golden era. In true Minion fashion, this transition is accomplished after they disrupt the shooting of a Western and ride a train off the tracks and into the very heart of Los Angeles; there, they will find gainful employment as rowdy background artists before being promoted as stars, exiled from the backlot and finally reborn as self-sustaining maverick imagemakers. They are, in this particular iteration, the Minions who saved Hollywood - which, given the mindboggling sums of money this series has made during an especially erratic period for today's Hollywood, would seem fair enough. The grand finale, however, sees the Minions being handed an Oscar ("after a long time") for their efforts; this, I think, can only come over as high-pitched dogwhistling to the Academy's voters.

It's not really art in itself, you see; it is, instead, more of the same colourful distraction, cursed with a manic skittishness that remains resistible. Creative prime mover Pierre Coffin is less concerned with telling a coherent or memorable story than with making peculiar noises and finding variably amusing things for his yellow pets to do. As the fond satire of the first half yields to the gloopy spectacle of the second, sequence after sequence whizzes between your ears, leaving scant trace behind. You could claim the Minions are here representing that army of migrant labourers (and European dreamers) who helped make Southern California the movie capital of the Western world, but it would seem a reach; more representative, I fear, is the passing reference to the line of Minions merchandise Henry and James start up, which Coffin fails to transform into anything like a joke. (That's the serious business here - and what we're meant to take away, along with our tie-in Minions popcorn bucket.) Doing right by its Tinseltown setting - it has to; it has its eye on an Oscar - Minions & Monsters is the most lavish-looking of these digimations to date, and certain of its skits are funny: I liked the radio broadcast that announces the economy of 1927 is "booming" and "shows no signs of slowing down whatsoever", and the Minion rehash of Citizen Kane, where the Rosebud line is replaced by a squeaky "oh, poop". Still, it just feels slightly sad to me that these are the only comedies the studios are consistently greenlighting nowadays. Maybe - just maybe - Minions & Monsters will come to serve a secondary purpose: with its allusions to Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd, this matinee fodder could be a Trojan horse for cineaste parents keen to get their offspring into silent film. Amaze your kids with Safety Last! or Sherlock, Jr., and they'll likely see why those foundational artworks have endured for a hundred years - in a way one senses the Minions movies, for all their scattershot pixels and giggles, almost certainly won't.

Minions & Monsters is now available to rent via Prime Video and YouTube, and on DVD through Universal.