REVIEW: ‘Minions & Monsters’ Is Cute Enough, If You Like Minions

Directed by Pierre Coffin and Patrick Delage and written by Coffin and Brian Lynch, Minions and Monsters is exactly as advertised: Minions and Monsters. It’s two good flavors that taste good together. If you like the sophomoric antics of the little yellow fellows from Illumination Studios, Minions and Monsters is a pretty fun tribute to classic Hollywood and why we love the movies in the first place.

If you’re not at least conversant in Minionese, Minions & Monsters may be a tough pill. The pace is uneven, with a frame story narrated by Allison Janney that takes far too long to get things moving, and half of the major characters, Max, Dort (Jesse Eisenberg) and Goomi (Trey Parker), not showing up until fully halfway through the movie. It’s a lot of windup for a medium-sized pitch. It’s never boring, but the quieter parts are only so satisfying.

The setup takes too long, but the movie hits when it hits.

Minions and Monsters starts with the premise that its two central minions, James and Henry, are as central to Hollywood history as some of history’s most cherished pictures, from Metropolis to E.T. Like all Minions, they’re part of a tribe, led by the bossy Minion, Dick, who has spent the ages searching for the world’s biggest bad guy to serve. Only, instead of human baddies, these Minions have been serving the likes of wizards and mummies.

After a long intro with decent gags, the Minions eventually wind up in Hollywood, where James realizes he can potentially fulfill his ambitions by becoming a renowned director. With the support of his mentor, Max (Christoph Waltz), James sets off with Henry and their friend Ed to make the greatest movie imaginable.

It’s all fun and games, filled with a bevy of references to the absolute classics of cinema, as well as plenty of butt jokes. James just doesn’t start making his movie until 45 minutes in. It leaves the movie feeling overly drawn out, despite being only 90 minutes long.

Minions and Monsters is stunningly beautiful.

Although the final two acts do feel like they take up just the right amount of time. Either Minions and Monsters just needed a different setup, or it wasn’t enough of an idea to warrant a feature-length film. Nonetheless, it’s harmlessly enjoyable for what it is.

Minions and Monsters’ greatest asset may be its animation. It is stunningly beautiful. There are moments where the animation looks so exceptional and detailed. It makes it more forgivable that the human character designs are so indistinguishable from each other and from the rest of the franchise, especially its female characters.

The movie’s use of different animation and art styles here and there is also much appreciated, as it breaks up the cadence of the humor. The score, too, is quite good. It evokes all the right classic genre motifs and drives the movie constantly forward, even in its slower segments.

Minions and Monsters avoids the easy, cheaper plot.

It would have been too easy for Minions and Monsters to set up the big bad that the Minion tribe finds as the movie studio executives. We live in a time when even the layperson knows that most studios are driven by profit instead of art. The quality of the average movie and the ways we see them distributed and marketed make that abundantly clear.

A lesser movie would have been a cheap critique of Hollywood by the one studio that has avoided the same level of public scrutiny in recent months and years that its competitors have deserved. Some of them are even directly parodied.

But a version of Minions and Monsters that fixated on the woes of Hollywood financing, or the egos of directors and talent, wouldn’t have been above reproach just because the studio distributing it isn’t in as hot water as its contemporaries. It still would have felt cheap, unoriginal, and perhaps even aggravating. Minions and Monsters deserves a measure of kudos just for avoiding such low-hanging fruit.

Minions and Monsters is uneven, but it’s cute enough.

What Minions and Monsters focuses on instead—the power of friendship and honesty—isn’t as well developed as one might hope, given how proud of itself the movie feels to be leaning into those morals. Those parts are just too glossed over and not lampshaded enough until the very end. But it’s still nice that a movie about fart jokes has some level of positive male bonding and love.

Minions and Monsters is uneven, but it’s cute enough. If you’re a Minion person, you’ll enjoy it. If you’re not, the classic Hollywood parodies and references probably won’t be enough to save you. But no matter what, it will make you long for a Hollywood where real artists made real movies for people to see in theaters together.

Minions & Monsters is in theaters everywhere July 1, 2026.