Minions & Monsters

Minions & Monsters hit theaters July 1, 2026: a ninety-minute animated comedy from Illumination, the third Minions prequel and seventh Despicable Me film. It walked in carrying the best reviews this franchise has ever gotten. Having seen it, I can report the critics are celebrating a movie whose single greatest achievement is being completely harmless, while also stroking the ego of the Hollywood machine.

It opens on a framing device. A tour guide walks kids through a museum of Hollywood history and stops at an exhibit for two Minions nobody recognizes: James and Henry. Drop back to the 1920s. A brand-new tribe of Minions. No Gru. No Kevin, Stuart, or Bob. Fresh yellow idiots doing what Minions do: finding evil bosses and accidentally killing them. They stumble onto a Hollywood backlot and wreck a Western mid-shoot. Overnight they become the biggest silent-film act in the world, because slapstick has no language barrier and neither, functionally, does Minionese. Christoph Waltz plays their director. Jeff Bridges voices both twin studio bosses. For a stretch they are the toast of Tinseltown. Then sound arrives, the world realizes it cannot understand a word these fellas say, and the career dies overnight. James, the dreamer, decides to make his own monster movie. The adventure continues from there.

People undercut the Despicable Me movies because the Minions are stupid little creatures. Yes. They are. Everyone stops looking there. Underneath the gibberish these films are almost always heartfelt first and stupid second. The first two Despicable Me pictures had excellent family stories of the kind classic Disney used to make and mostly does not anymore. That pattern holds. This one is about a little yellow dreamer who wants to make something and the two friends who follow him off a cliff to help. Already more story than some kids’ movies this year. Super Mario Galaxy, cough, had a sneeze of a plot.

The word that fits Minions properties is harmless. Sit down for a modern Disney film and somebody in that building has decided your kid will absorb a worldview today, hidden in the third act like a pill in peanut butter. Illumination does not play that game. Ninety minutes of slapstick and friends making a movie together. That is the assignment.

What every critic on earth is celebrating is the love letter to Old Hollywood: Easter eggs and showcases nodding at Citizen Kane with Minions, A Trip to the Moon with Minions. Adults go, I remember that. Kids will not get it at all. Harmless, sure. It also turned my stomach a little. A love letter to Hollywood, written in 2026, delivered by the seventh film in a $5.6 billion merchandising franchise, is hard to take seriously. The movie is fond of a Hollywood that made things worth revering, whatever else you think of that era. That Hollywood is long dead. Today’s town shipped The Mandalorian and Grogu and Supergirl inside the same twelve months. When that industry showers this with the highest Rotten Tomatoes score in franchise history, around 90%, the best reviews these movies have ever seen, you have to ask what is being graded. Hollywood made an I Love Hollywood movie and then Hollywood gave itself glowing reviews. The town will always love a picture about how magical the town used to be. Beats looking in the mirror at what it is now: grotesque and undead.

Full disclosure: I am a Lovecraft fan. A kids’ movie with Lovecraft-adjacent monsters is, for me, very fun. The two big creatures frozen in ice are named Howard and Phillip. H.P. Lovecraft. That is the joke. There are a lot of jokes like that. Goomi is a chew-toy Cthulhu with Trey Parker’s voice. Irene is a giant orange blob covered in eyeballs, nodding at The Blob (1958) and Lovecraftian flesh alike. Handled properly: lighthearted instead of madness and violence. Great.

Honest about the audience, though: this is a baby movie. Little, little kids. Simple plot, loud colors, constant slapstick, merciful ninety minutes, a Minion falling down roughly every forty seconds. Ideal for the target demographic. They will love every second. The best material, the best jokes and nods, are things those kids will not get. George Lucas appears as himself, trapped in a museum display case. Great way to open a movie. Kids will not understand. Same with Citizen Kane. Same with most of the Old Hollywood letter. Cinema aficionados are not lining up for Minions. The smartest jokes play to empty seats while the full seats cannot read yet. Who catches this stuff? Dads. I think it is dads.

A ticket runs about $15, matinees under $10. The story carries heart. The whole machine is engineered to entertain a five-year-old for ninety minutes, and that is all it is trying to be. 7.5 out of 10.