A mile a minute just like its two predecessors, Illumination’s latest Minions spin-off, Minions & Monsters, has two things separating it from everything we’ve seen in this corner of the Despicable Me universe thus far: a handful of new monsters, and an almost overwhelming love for film history.
In classic Minions fashion, Pierre Coffin and company throw so many visual gags, slapstick bits, and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it jokes at the audience that it’s impossible to catch everything on a first viewing. Thankfully, many of those jokes come in the form of recreations and references to classic films, and I’ll fully admit I’m the exact target audience for that sort of thing.
There’s something deeply satisfying about turning your brain off for ninety minutes and doing the DiCaprio pointing meme every time James and Henry suddenly find themselves reenacting scenes from Citizen Kane, A Clockwork Orange, or The Blob (just a couple of the few dozen movies referenced here).
It’s a fun wrinkle on the humor that Coffin has spent years refining ever since the Minions branched off into their own series. As much as I still intermittently enjoy the mainline Despicable Me films, centering these chaotic little yellow weirdos has consistently proven to be the better formula. They’re charming enough to carry a movie almost entirely on physical comedy, and the “so dumb it’s funny” style of humor continues to work for kids and adults for completely different reasons.
The film history angle only makes that stronger. Minions & Monsters somehow finds room for jokes referencing everything from A Trip to the Moon and Metropolis to The Maltese Falcon, Sunset Boulevard, Ben-Hur, Jaws, Babylon, and even introduces an important character that directly riffing on 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still. There are undoubtedly dozens more that completely flew over my head, which honestly just makes me excited to revisit it now knowing how indebted to history this really is.
And more importantly, the references never felt exhausting. There’s a version of this movie where constantly winking at the audience becomes insufferable fan service. Instead, the jokes come so quickly and naturally that they essentially become the film’s rhythm. Even when one doesn’t land, another arrives about ten seconds later.
That said, once you start looking beyond those references, there isn’t all that much underneath them. Oddly enough, I think the title does the movie a bit of a disservice. Going in, I expected the monsters themselves to be the central attraction. Instead, they’re almost secondary to the Hollywood homage. The story doesn’t really kick into gear until Henry, James, Ed, and the rest of the gang accidentally summon Goomi, a cute little green monster (voiced by Trey Parker) who’s featured heavily throughout the trailers and supplemental marketing, but doesn’t get nearly the onscreen time you’d expect.
He’s fun enough, but there simply isn’t as much “monster” here as the title suggests. Then again, plot has never exactly been the reason anyone buys a ticket to a Minions movie.
That’s been one of my recurring criticisms of Illumination as a whole. Whether it’s The Super Mario Bros Movie or parts of the Sing franchise, I’ve often found the studio’s stories to be little more than excuses to string together easter eggs and musical numbers. The difference is that the Minions films are simply better at embracing chaos. Their zaniness makes the thin plotting much easier to forgive because they’re constantly finding new ways to make you laugh, and Minions & Monsters mostly successfully continues that trend.
I also found myself wondering how younger audiences will engage with some of the deeper film references. My guess is they’ll do exactly what generations of kids my age did with SpongeBob. We laughed at the comedy when we were far too young to understand some of the jokes, and then revisit it years later and slowly realize half the jokes were aimed squarely at the adults sitting beside them.
That’s honestly pretty sweet. Whether the story successfully ties all of those ideas together is another conversation entirely, but I genuinely appreciated the attempt. It’s not every day you see one of the biggest animated franchises in the world take time to celebrate over a century of filmmaking while simultaneously letting tiny yellow creatures recreate scenes from some of cinema’s greatest classics.
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No, Minions & Monsters isn’t secretly a deep movie – at the end of the day, it’s still an Illumination film through and through. The story remains secondary to the jokes, and the title promises a movie that doesn’t quite exist. But I had a hard time being bothered by either of those things when I was having this much fun spotting references and watching Coffin continue to squeeze every ounce of comedy out of these little yellow guys.
Score: 6/10
Minions & Monsters (2026)
- Cast: Pierre Coffin, Trey Parker, Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg, Zoey Deutch, Bobby Moynihan, Phil LaMarr, George Lucas
- Director: Pierre Coffin
- Genre: Adventure, Animation, Family, Comedy
- Runtime: 90 minutes
- Rated: PG
- Release Date: July 1, 2026
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