Minions & Monsters
June 30th, 2026
MOVIE: MINIONS & MONSTERS
STARRING: PIERRE COFFIN, ALLISON JANNEY, CHRISTOPH WALTZ, JEFF BRIDGES, JESSE EISENBERG, TREY PARKER, ZOEY DEUTCH
DIRECTED BY: PIERRE COFFIN, PATRICK DELAGE
AMovieGuy.com’s RATING: 3 STARS (Out of 4)
RATED:PG
RUN TIME: 90 MINUTES
The biggest surprise of 2026 might be that Minions & Monsters is a wonderful love letter to cinema. Don’t get me wrong- the yellow, pill-shaped characters from Despicable Me can be an acquired taste. Still, with their third standalone installment and, astonishingly, seventh overall film appearance, it’s safe to say these gibberish-speaking troublemakers have become part of the cinematic landscape. There must be a reason they’ve remained so relevant, and directors Pierre Coffin and Patrick Delage have found a way to weave them into the fabric of movie history with the delightfully silly Minions & Monsters.
As we learned in the earlier Minions films, these yellow henchmen have been around since the dawn of time, which conveniently includes cinema’s history. The film opens with a tour of the Universal Pictures Museum, led by tour guide Olivia (Allison Janney, serving as a charming narrator), who walks visitors through silent films, E.T., Orson Welles, and even an exhibit featuring the real George Lucas. The history lesson eventually introduces two Minions, James and Henry (all the Minions are once again voiced by Coffin), who, instead of following their disgruntled leader Dick in search of a new “big boss,” would much rather tell stories.
After several villains meet unfortunate, James-induced fates, the group stumbles onto a movie studio, where they accidentally become part of a horseback chase in a Western directed by Max (voiced by Christoph Waltz). The mishap convinces a pair of studio-owning twin brothers (both voiced by Jeff Bridges) that every movie should feature Minions, launching the little yellow creatures into stardom. That is, until talking pictures arrive. Their babbling inability to speak coherent dialogue quickly brings their careers crashing down. James and Henry, however, refuse to give up on filmmaking. Armed with a magical spell book, they attempt to conjure a giant monster for a kaiju epic. Instead, they summon a tiny Cthulhu-like creature named Goomi (Trey Parker), who has monster-making ambitions of his own- only his involve destroying the world. Naturally, it’s up to the Minions to save the day.
From a narrative standpoint, Minions & Monsters, co-written by Coffin and Brian Lynch, is a bit messy. The central story follows James and Henry’s filmmaking ambitions, while a subplot focuses on the rest of the Minions befriending a robot named Dort (Jesse Eisenberg) and his suffragette companion Debbie (Zoey Deutch). Yet, much like the film’s opening ten minutes, Coffin and company eventually find a way to connect all of the disparate threads. While the first half is a delightful stroll through the history of cinema, the final act delivers exactly what younger audiences came for: pure Minion mayhem. By now, that’s simply part of the formula.
What can’t be denied is that Minions & Monsters genuinely celebrates the movies. It pays tribute to Charlie Chaplin, the arrival of talking pictures, classic science fiction like The Day the Earth Stood Still, and ultimately culminates in a loving homage to the city-smashing spectacle of a classic Godzilla film. We may have once found the Minions tedious or overly silly, but, for better or worse, they’ve become part of the fabric of modern cinema. If it takes a Minion to inspire a child to ask who Buster Keaton was or why Citizen Kane matters, that’s a pretty good place to start. Minions still have ways to surprise us. Monsters, bananas, fart jokes- it’s all cinema.
3 STARS
MINIONS & MONSTERS IS IN THEATERS EVERYWHERE WEDNESDAY, JULY 1ST, 2026.
Written by: Leo Brady
