Movie Review: ‘Minions & Monsters’ is a very yellow mash note to Hollywood

Every once in a while, Hollywood gets high on its own supply and makes a love letter to moviemaking. It happened recently with Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” and George Clooney’s “Jay Kelly.” Now it’s time for the unlikeliest of love-letter writers: canary-yellow, gibberish-speaking, overall-wearing mini-monsters.

“Minions & Monsters” — the third chapter in the ongoing standalone adventures of the “Despicable Me” pint-sized enablers — is about the sheer greatness of moviemaking, and it’s a navel-gazing misfire. Few industries — maybe journalism, sure — is as enamored at making its profession seem heroic.

The Minions this time find themselves at the dawn of both the movie business in Hollywood and the last push by suffragists to get the vote. It’s a weird confluence that writers Brian Lynch and Pierre Coffin fumble.

The movie has playful references to old screen gods — Harold Lloyd dangling from the hands of a clock and Charlie Chaplin swallowed by the gears of a mechanical system — along Hollywood nods to “Casablanca” and the punny title “The Good, the Bad and the Stupid” — but the kids in the audience won’t get them and their parents are just too tired. Harold Lloyd jokes don’t hit as hard in 2026.

Two of the legion of faceless Minions step forward this time — best friends James and Henry, creative misfits amid a smear of yellow drones — to unite and make a movie. (Who knew there was a Minion counterculture?)

Things go very well at first — turns out adding a Minion or two to a cowboy or a heist movie makes them instant kings of the box office — and they soon move into a Beverly Hills mansion and become insufferable. James dreams of winning an Oscar, which in this case is a statuette of a gold banana, a Minion obsession.

But they hit a wall when silent movies turn to talkies. And since they spout nothing but nonsense — “Fantastico” “miso soup” and “vamos” — can’t make the transition. They’re dumped out of the studio system.

That’s when James and Henry finally get the plot going: Make their own killer monster movie by conjuring up real monsters. The first one they try turns out a little weird: The gigantic, fearsome octopus-dragon they request turns out to be a cute green Funko Pop-like critter called Goomi, voiced by Trey Parker. Goomi promises to find them some real monsters. But should we trust him?

Coffin, making his first solo directing effort after co-helming all three “Despicable Me” films and the first “Minions,” voices all the Minions — he must be fun to have at parties — and is an assured hand. The violence levels are a little high for PG, including a beheading and various impalings, plus the usual senseless mayhem.

The screenwriters have included a romantic subplot involving a suffragette voiced by Zoey Deutch who falls for a robot-alien (standout work by Jesse Eisenberg) in a storyline that makes less and less sense. And the framing device — a museum tour guide explaining how Minions shaped Hollywood — sags awkwardly.

Adults can keep awake looking for the Easter eggs Coffin has left for serious cinephiles: “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” “Steamboat Bill, Jr.,” “A Trip to the Moon,” “Metropolis,” “Citizen Kane” and “The Blob.” Maybe the best moment in the movie is almost a throwaway: Director George Lucas, appearing as himself.

“Hooray for Hollywood” is on the soundtrack and that might have been the subtitle for the movie itself. There are some people whose eyes get moist thinking about picking up a film camera and following their muse, having their work play in a dark theater to cheers. And then there are others who just want to get on with it already. “Vamos!”

“Minions & Monsters,” a Universal Pictures release that opens in theaters July 1, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for “violence/action, language, and rude/macabre humor.” Running time: 90 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.