Entertainment
Minions & Monsters Is The Only Kids Movie You Need To Watch This Summer
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Having graduated college in 2010, I missed out on the entire Despicable Me franchise for a number of reasons. The biggest is that I was the youngest member of my family by a long shot, meaning I was already 22 years old when the first one came out. I simply wasn’t the target demographic based on my life circumstances alone. I also had a coworker at my post-grad office job who had little Minions plushies all over their desk, and our tastes did not align at all, so there was another layer of abstraction that kept me away from the franchise.
I’m not the type of person to outwardly hate on things that bring people joy if those things are harmless, but I also write things off pretty quickly based on what I know I like and dislike, so I never put much thought into either the Despicable Me or Minions film series.
And then I had kids.
I’ve played these movies in my house after screening them for my kids, and they’re innocent enough, but I’ve also irresponsibly sat down with my kids and watched South Park (more on that later), so take what I say with a grain of salt. When our local drive-in theater announced they were going to be playing Minions & Monsters, my 5-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter lost their minds.
I also lost my mind because it’s been nothing but kids’ movies this summer, which is fine, but I’m still salty about missing the screening of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple because we couldn’t find a sitter.
So we spent our Saturday night watching Minions & Monsters, the latest installment in a franchise I know next to nothing about aside from how annoying their voices are, and I actually had the best time, though not for the reason you’d probably expect.
The obvious reason is that I’ve never heard my kids laugh harder at anything in their entire lives. The less obvious reason is that Minions & Monsters is the seventh feature-length installment in the Despicable Me franchise, among countless other shorts, but you can enjoy it as a standalone piece without really knowing anything about the series at all.
If you really want to enjoy Despicable Me as a parent, just do as my daughter says and “Lock in, Babycakes!”
Zero Lore Dumps. You Can Just Watch The Movie.
The night before going to see Minions & Monsters, I did one of those frantic Wikipedia crawls to get the character names straight, and I gave up shortly after. It’s not that I don’t have patience for my kids’ entertainment choices, either. I’m well versed in Bluey, Blippi, Paw Patrol, Peppa Pig, and when the moment is right, I even sneak in some Rocko’s Modern Life when I think they’re ready for the humor.
With such short notice, cramming in six movies and God knows how many games, shorts, and web series just wasn’t happening.
I said, “Screw it,” and went in blind, and that’s exactly how Minions & Monsters won me over.
You can go in totally blind.
So what’s it about? It’s about Minions throughout history who influence world events because they latch onto a master, for better or worse, and wreak havoc because they’re completely enslaved to their impulses. Their behavior almost always ends in disaster.
We’re introduced to James, Henry, Ed, and Dick, all voiced by Pierre Coffin, and these are the Minions we spend the most time with. They all sound the same, obviously, and they all act pretty much the same. They speak in a weird hybrid of English and gibberish, and they leave waves of destruction wherever they go, never fully grasping the gravity of whatever situation they’re in.
Here, they inadvertently sabotage filmmaker Max’s (Christoph Waltz) projects by wandering into frame. To his shock and delight, studio executives Frank and Elwood Bright (Jeff Bridges) love the little creatures and demand they appear in all of his films. When the silent era comes to an end and Hollywood embraces talkies, every film starring the Minions tanks because nobody can understand what the hell they’re saying.
Rightfully dejected, they decide to make their own movie. Their brilliant idea is to summon a demon so they can create the ultimate monster movie. James, Henry, and Ed consult the Book of the Dead and accidentally summon Goomi (Trey Parker), whose full name is Gary Orkam Oliver Magma Ichabod the Deceiver. Dick and the other Minions instead team up with an alien robot named Dort (Jesse Eisenberg), and naturally every plan backfires, leaving them to clean up the collateral damage they created.
Sounds Like The Guy From South Park Because It Is
Like I mentioned earlier, I occasionally watch The Simpsons and South Park with my kids. I think it’s healthy to sit down with your kids and talk about what’s appropriate and what isn’t, so long as you’re not pushing the envelope too far. We’re not watching episodes like “Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina,” but we’ve definitely burned through “The Losing Edge” several times.
The only reason I mention this is because the second Goomi started talking, my daughter and I both turned to each other and asked in unison, “Is that Cartman?!”I assumed it was someone doing a really convincing impression because the voice is so iconic, but when the credits rolled, it confirmed that Trey Parker was voicing Goomi in Minions & Monsters.
And honestly, it makes perfect sense. If you know your South Park lore, Cthulhu showed up during the “Coon and Friends” storyline, so Parker clearly has a soft spot for absurd monster comedy.
The part I enjoyed most about Parker’s involvement is that he jumped at the chance to voice a character in something his own daughter could actually watch. That’s especially funny when you consider there’s plenty of footage online of him having his daughter record some absolutely unhinged Ike Broflovski dialogue for South Park.
Even If You Don’t Enjoy It, You’ll Enjoy How Much Your Kids Enjoy It
I’m happy to report that I actually quite liked Minions & Monsters. Given the nature of its story and the era it takes place in, it takes countless shots at classic Hollywood tropes while stuffing nearly every scene with parody and chaotic sight gags. If you’re into the kind of physical comedy you’d find in an old Laurel and Hardy or Jerry Lewis routine, you’ll probably have a good time.
I was mostly stoked because it genuinely played like a standalone adventure.
My wife, who is just as unversed in Minions lore, kept turning to me and asking what was going on, and I’d just shrug and say, “I don’t know. They’re little single-celled organisms with poor impulse control,” before adding, “Then they fall down and stuff.”
That was apparently an acceptable answer.
My favorite part of the movie, though, was hearing how hard my kids were laughing. It reminded me of that Family Guy scene where Brian calls Stewie out for having an obnoxious laugh whenever he thinks something is really funny, except three or four octaves higher and about ten times louder.
I joke around constantly, but I guess I’m not that funny because I’ve never heard them laugh this hard.
It was good for my soul.
I still don’t really know what the Minions are all about, but they gave us a pretty great Saturday night, so honestly, I have no notes.
Minions & Monsters is currently playing in theaters everywhere. Bring some earplugs to knock down a little of the high end, and you’ll have a great time with your kids watching this one.
Entertainment
The Latest Poster For Avengers: Doomsday Secretly Spoils The Plot
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
With less than five months left until the film’s release, Marvel has taken their marketing for Avengers: Doomsday to the next level. Right now, fans are mostly focused on the trailer that dropped today, which is no surprise; after all, it’s not every day that you see the reunion of Thor and Steve Rogers or, for that matter, a battle between Shang-Chi and Gambit. Amid all the breathless hype over the trailer, however, a more powerful advertisement is lurking in plain sight. At the same time Marvel launched the trailer, they also released a new Avengers: Doomsday poster.
Compared to that crowded character poster, the new poster is downright subdued. It features Doctor Doom staring at a huge tapestry with a broken world and two characters: a woman and a boy. Some comics fans think this image is Doom and his mother, a character who is eventually damned to Hell. However, other fans are convinced that this is actually an image of Doom’s wife and child; if true, this would effectively ruin the biggest plot twist. How does it do that? If you don’t mind some potential spoilers for this year’s biggest film, just keep reading!
You Can’t Spell “Painting” Without “Pain”
So, let’s start this story in reverse (just don’t let the TVA get me!): why do some fans think the woman in this poster is Doctor Doom’s mother? In the comics, she’s a big deal. To defeat an evil dictator who was ruling her country with an iron fist (an actual fist, not the kung-fu guy), she made a deal with the devil. As usual, the deal went wrong, and she lost control of the powers that she gained from Mephisto. She renounced those powers, got killed, and was then dragged into Hell. To see her again, Doom later mastered magic, visited Mephisto, and conducted an experiment that ruined his own face.
However, all of the lore behind this origin story is too dense to fit into Avengers: Doomsday, a movie which is already crowded with endless character cameos. It seems the movie is taking a different direction, as multiple reports have claimed that the two figures are actually Doom’s wife and child. An unconfirmed leak of the movie’s plot (don’t say I didn’t warn you about spoilers, kids!) claims that Doom actually lost his family to one of the incursions, which is when one reality collides with another. This motivates Doom to learn more about the incursions and to plot his revenge.
A Hero Will Be Broken
Revenge against whom, you ask? According to the leaked plot, Steve Rogers! Reportedly, Loki visits the former Captain America in the past and warns him that the TVA will prune his entire timeline because he’s not supposed to be there. In an act of seeming kindness, Loki brings Cap, Peggy, and their young son to the Fantastic Four’s universe. However, the leak claims that Steve’s presence in this universe somehow triggers an incursion and that Doom disfigured himself and killed his own wife and son trying to stop it. In a shocking twist, Doom reportedly kills Steve’s son in front of the hero in an act of vengeance.
Now, again, all of this comes from a leaked plot summary that hasn’t been confirmed, so all of this could be an Ego-sized bottle of hogwash. But it’s worth noting that the Avengers: Doomsday teasers last year prominently focused on both Captain America and Thor becoming fathers. This potentially adds credence to the idea that this is a film about family and how far someone will go to protect the ones they love. If the leaks are true, this innocuous poster featuring Doctor Doom is spoiling the motivation the villain will have to cross time and space and cross countless moral event horizons along the way.
A movie where costumed vigilantes (like Batman, Spider-Man, and so many more) are driven by the ghosts of family members they lost when they were children? Well, nobody ever accused Marvel of being all that original!
Entertainment
The Best Horror Series Ever Made Is Now Streaming For Free
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
My absolute favorite kind of movie is the anthology. When you have a collection of short films all rolled into one, it provides the ultimate ROI for the audience. Don’t like one of the stories? You can just thug it out with the short runtime or skip ahead to the next tale. Either way is infinitely preferable to slogging through a two-hour film that started boring you to tears in the first scene. The anthology is much rarer in television, however, because networks and streamers have learned just how attached fans get to the same characters and stories, causing them to run these shows into the ground.
Heroes, Stranger Things, Star Trek: Discovery…what do all of these shows have in common? They were designed to be anthologies that would change things up each season, but their early success meant we were stuck with the same cast for years as the show got worse. Fortunately, true anthology lovers are just a click away from getting their fix. Right now, Tales From the Crypt is streaming for free on Tubi, just waiting to delight all you ghouls and boys. It’s not just the perfect anthology show; it is, in fact, the greatest horror series ever made!
Meet The Cryptkeeper
Tales From the Crypt fully embraces its anthology format, with every single episode focusing on different characters and different terrifying tales. What ties all of them together is our host, the Cryptkeeper. He’s a snarky, hilariously mean corpse of a character brought to life by a small army of puppeteers. The show originated on HBO, and its creators embraced the fact that it didn’t have to abide by any of the restrictive standards of network television. As such, episodes were filled to the brim with vulgar language, nudity, sex, and more buckets of blood than you can shake a bodybag at.
Younger horror fans should know that it’s almost impossible to overstate the popularity of Tales From the Crypt and its ghoulish host. Despite all the blood, breasts, and beasts, the show was wildly popular with kids, including my own underage self. Accordingly, it got two spinoffs aimed directly at children: Tales From the Cryptkeeper (a Saturday Morning children’s cartoon) and Secrets of the Cryptkeeper’s Haunted House (a weird gameshow). If that seems odd, this was during the same time that Kenner marketed toys based on Terminator 2 and Aliens directly to kids. What can I say? The ‘90s were weird, man!
Friends In Low Places
One compelling reason to check out Tales From the Crypt is that it had plenty of awesome guest stars, all of whom were happy to do an episode without being tied down to a long contract. Guests included Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brad Pitt, Michael J. Fox, Tom Hanks, and so many more. In most cases, these actors are performing against type, making what happens to them onscreen that much more shocking. Trust me: if you only know actors like Robert Picardo and Wil Wheaton from Star Trek, you’ll never look at them the same way after watching Tales From the Crypt.
For me, though, the single best thing about Tales From the Crypt is the show’s wicked sense of humor. With his relentless puns, wild expressions, and unhinged laughter, the Cryptkeeper sets the tone for a show that has black comedy running through its veins at all times. This adds serious entertainment value and also helps position the show as a light (but filling) bite for horror fans. Not in the mood for elevated horror and don’t have the time for a two-hour psychological thriller? You can always count on Tales From the Crypt to deliver a perfect slice of scary entertainment in under 30 minutes.
There’s not much more to say, especially without spoiling these awesome episodes. Ready to see if this early HBO success story lives up to the hype? Maybe you want to laugh and scream in equal measure, or just write down some weird new puns with which to torment your children? Whatever your reason, the best horror series ever made is just a click away. Tales From the Crypt is currently streaming for free on Tubi, which is arguably the best platform for any boils and ghouls who love a good scare!
TALES FROM THE CRYPT REVIEW SCORE
Entertainment
The Eufy E25 2-in-1 robot vacuum is $400 off at Amazon right now
SAVE 40%: As of July 20, you can get the Eufy E25 robot vacuum-mop combo for $599.99, down from $999.99, at Amazon. That’s a 40% discount or $400 in savings.
$599.99
at Amazon
$999.99
Save $400
As you’ve probably read by now, I have two beagles who love to destroy my floors (particularly right after I’ve cleaned the entire apartment). To keep my sanity intact, I own an arsenal of cleaning supplies, including the Dreame L60 Pro Ultra and the Aero Pro Steam (I call it my “Dreame Team“). But I also know that brand loyalty usually takes a backseat when a really good discount pops up. (Plus, it’s my job.)
Right now, you can get the Eufy E25 robot vacuum-mop combo for $599.99, down from $999.99, at Amazon. That’s a 40% discount or $400 in savings.
Mashable Trend Report
It features 20,000 Pa of suction, empties its own dustbin, and even washes its own mop roller. It also comes equipped with AI obstacle avoidance to dodge everyday clutter (like rogue dog toys), and an extending arm to scrub right up against your baseboards. But, according to some Amazon reviewers, there are a few minor drawbacks, including a louder-than-usual drying cycle and finicky rollers.
Even so, picking a good spot for the base or doing occasional maintenance is a small price to pay to never have to mop your own floors again.
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