Hollywood’s silent film era is remembered lovingly and humorously in “Minions & Monsters” with “Easter eggs” stuffed in the animated film (above a trailer screen grab). An “Easter egg” is an embedded element that conveys hidden meaning, and those nuggets ignited a social media buzz for “Minions.”
For example, Cartoon Clubhouse on YouTube posted a 20-minute ”30+ CRAZY Hidden Details” parsing the movie’s Easter eggs, sometimes in slow motion, because otherwise viewers might miss. The “Minions” marketing campaign leaned heavily online media, hoping to create a ripple effect, with messaging connecting to popular culture and cinema history. Fans delighted in revealing. And journalists and influencers pointed out hidden meanings.
Looking elsewhere, Warner Bros. Pictures “A Minecraft Movie” a year ago was loaded with Easter eggs, which referenced the source video game. Movie audiences erupted when a baby zombie appears on cinema screens riding a chicken like a horse. If one isn’t acquainted with the “Minecraft” video game, it’s just a dumb scene. But many buzzed about this messaging and cinema audiences delighted in group reactions.
For “Minions,” subtle zingers around cinema history are a hook for the family-oriented movie to rope in adult audiences steeped in cinema legend and lore. At the same time, “Minions” is so wacky that kids without the benefit of film history are still entertained.
“It may seem like the ‘Minions’ movies are for kids, but I’m not so sure if that’s true for the newest one,” wrote Marisa LaScala in Good Housekeeping magazine. “’Minions & Monsters’ is actually for the cinephiles, and the further back your love of movies stretches, the better.”
The movie is a homage to Hollywood. Passages in “Minions” recall 1920s silver-screen stars Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. Movies referenced range from 1999’s “The Matrix” to 1958’s “The Blob” to 1923’s silent “Safety Last!” with its signature repairing-the-clocktower scene to 1903’s seminal “The Great Train Robbery.”
The new animated film underperformed slightly in cinemas, however, despite the good reviews, non-stop comedy and all those audience-engrossing Easter eggs. For its opening three-day weekend July 3-5, the Universal Pictures release posted $36.4 million in domestic (U.S. and Canada) boxoffice, which is the low for the seven-film “Minions”/“Despicable Me” cartoon film series. Domestic five-day boxoffice was $61 million after the July 1 premiere. Early research tracking had predicted a better $80 million-$95 million launch for “Minions.” The film is performing better overseas.
So, the actual domestic boxoffice is a 30% lower from the average range of its early prerelease tracking, which is a wide miss; anything over 15% is considered a polling misfire, according to the third edition of academic/business book “Marketing to Moviegoers.”
Speculation is that Walt Disney Studios’ holdover animated blockbuster “Toy Story 5” undercut “Minions.” Both are labeled with a family-friendly PG rating.
The film’s title might have been a problem with its inclusion of “Monsters,” which are usually an audience magnet. But there are no nasty monsters in the latest “Minions” that is set in 1920s Hollywood, just some benign creatures like a clumsy mummy.
On aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, professional critics gave the film a high 89% and moviegoers a pretty-good 75% for its Popcornmeter. Above 60% is considered popular, or “fresh.”
The latest “Minions” cost a reported $85 million to make, which is at the low-end of Hollywood’s big-budget range and something of a bargain for a major studio like Universal Pictures. So, expect this “Minions” to be profitable, despite the so-so opening weekend. Top-tier animated features from Disney routinely carry price tags in the area of $200 million.
Old Hollywood takes a satirical zinger with this line from the movie, when one Minion exclaims: “We’re not evil anymore! We work in the motion picture industry!”
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