While the Toy Story movies look to the digital future of entertainment, the Despicable Me franchise is going way, way back into its analog past. Even movie buffs will be surprised just how much of a deep dive into Hollywood history Pierre Coffin’s latest animated offering is taking — the opening credits alone trace the history of the Universal logo back to the silent-era days of The Trans-Atlantic Film Company — but arcane references to Eadweard Muybridge, the Lumière brothers and Georges Méliès are mostly just sophisticated window-dressing for an enjoyable kid-friendly Hellzapoppin’-style slapstick comedy.
The events of the more straightforward Despicable Me movies are mentioned, if at all, mostly in passing; instead, the framing device sees a group of tourists being ushered by tour guide Olivia (Alison Janney) through a Hollywood hall of fame, which celebrates films such as The Matrix and Airplane! and features the actual George Lucas in a Perspex showcase (“I’d really like to go home now,” he complains softly). Olivia stops at an exhibit depicting two Minions, James and Henry (all the Minions are voiced by Coffin), and is perplexed when no one present appears to have heard of them, at least by name.
There begins a lengthy flashback explaining the nature of the Minions, how they have spent centuries crossing continents to find the perfect evil master to serve. One-eyed ogres, pirate kings, ancient mummies… the Minions try their best, but always end up nearly killing them, which is how things end when they try to become a sorcerer’s apprentices. Moving swiftly into the 1920s, they latch onto a cowboy bandit who robs a bank and makes a daring escape by horse, train and airplane. Only, he isn’t a villain at all, rather an actor working on the new film produced by the Bright brothers (Jeff Bridges).
The film’s director, a European émigré named Max (Christoph Waltz) and modeled very much on the directors fleeing Germany in the early 20th century, is distraught when the Minions crash his meticulously plotted action scene and cause havoc in the streets of Los Angeles. The Bright brothers, however, think “those sickly children” are a laugh-riot and offer them a contract, a rocket-ride to overnight stardom that is covered in a very funny News on the March-style newsreel, one of several nods to Citizen Kane. Surprisingly, this is not entirely where the film is going; a little before the halfway mark, the Minions mess up yet again (leaving a vacuum, one imagines, the Three Stooges will soon fill).
James, however, hasn’t given up on his dreams of becoming a movie director and winning an Oscar (which, in Minions World, is a gold banana). This fantasy inspires him to come up with storyboards for Minions y Monstras, a horror film which will pit the Minions against a terrifying cabal of monsters. This is where the sorcerer’s book of spells resurfaces; James and Henry succeed in summoning a playful demon, Goomi (Trey Parker), a kind of Funko Pop! Cthulhu, who tricks the Minions into releasing his friends from purgatory.
In the meantime, the rest of the Minions have found a new boss, a suspiciously humanoid robot alien named Dort (Jesse Eisenberg), in a surreal plot twist that puts a bit of a strain on what little story there already is. Happily, Coffin and his co-writer Brian Lynch don’t get too carried away with it, and their spaghetti bolognese of storylines does come together — albeit rather messily — with a chaotic shootout that happens well before the 90-minute mark and precedes a lot of anti-climactic filler during the closing credits.
The pace is hectic but not exhausting, and the squeaky, Alvin & the Chipmunks-style Esperanto that is “Minionese” is actually a lot more infectious than it first appears. The final suggestion that the film is a film within a film is a bit much, and, like a lot of other things that happen in it, not only doesn’t make much sense but actively revels in that fact. The whole thing is an anarchic delirium reminiscent of the kind experienced by Bart and Milhouse after drinking an all-syrup Super Squishee; thankfully, the comedown is quick and relatively painless.
Title: Minions & Monsters
Distributor: Universal
Release date: July 1, 2026
Director: Pierre Coffin
Screenwriters: Pierre Coffin, Brian Lynch
Cast: Pierre Coffin, Alison Janney, Trey Parker, Christoph Waltz, Jesse Eisenberg, Jeff Bridges
Rating: PG
Running time: 1 hr 29 mins
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