written by: Brian Lynch and Pierre Coffin
produced by: Chris Meledandri and Bill Ryan
directed by: Pierre Coffin
rated: PG (for violence/action, language, and rude/macabre humor)
runtime: 90 min.
U.S. release date: July 1, 2026

July is typically when a new entry in the “Despicable Me” franchise drops, and here we have the seventh and latest installment, called “Minions & Monsters” from Illumination, the animation studio under Universal Studios. As long as they make money, they’ll be cranking them out. Those little yellow buggers with denim overalls are either hilarious or annoying, sometimes both simultaneously. It’s directed by Pierre Coffin, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Brian Lynch, and has been involved as either a co-director or the voice of all the Minions since 2010. “Minions & Monsters” marks Coffin’s first solo directorial outing, and the sequel sets out to show how enamored it is with the movies, particularly filmmaking. The storytelling here may be a little uneven, but the main goal of fun and mayhem is intact, and cinephiles will get a kick out of the references to cinema history.

“Minions & Monsters” begins at a present-day Hollywood studio tour, with the guide, Olivia (Allison Janney), leading a group through a museum wing showcasing historic moments and figures in Hollywood. Right away, the clever humor can be spotted by viewers versed in a vague sense of movie history, especially by those with a keen knowledge of the great movies from the past (particularly those distributed by Universal). Olivia points to a hanging display of E.T. and Elliott and briefly interacts with a George Lucas display (voiced by the man himself), before stopping in disbelief when she learns that no one on the tour is familiar with the legendary filmmakers, James and Henry.

Olivia stops next to the giant bouncing globe Chaplin used in “The Great Dictator” and has the entire tour sit on the floor, as if it’s story time at the children’s wing of a public library. She then launches into telling the tale of James and Henry, two Minions who made their mark on Hollywood 100 years ago. The pair are part of a tribe of Minions that are wandering the earth, crossing oceans and deserts in search of a “Big Boss”, a villain, to serve. James is unlike many of his single-minded cohorts: a creative dreamer who always draws in his sketchbook. He’s seen by Henry, who turns out to be someone who encourages Henry’s creativity while also grounding him. The two become fast friends, often giggling and cackling, much to the chagrin of de facto leader, Dick. James and Henry also befriend a deaf Minion pal named Ed (who develops his own sign language), and the trio becomes inseparable.

All of this is narrated by tour guide Olivia, because, after all, the Minions (all of whom are voiced by Pierre Coffin) speak Minionese, and if you didn’t already know, the language of these diminutive yellow capsule-shaped creatures is jibberish that at times resembles Spanish. Imagine combining Jawas with Oompa-Loompas with the physical comedy of silent-film-era greats such as Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Chaplin.

As their story is told, we see the Minions tribe assimilate themselves to what they perceive as a “Big Boss”, and the comical kick to that is how each time they wind up inadvertently killing the villain they’re trying to serve. That’s usually the fault of James, who unintentionally ends their life in comical ways. There’s a hilarious encounter with a giant cyclops on an island (which immediately brought to mind how it won’t be the last cyclops we see on the big-screen this month, with Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” around the corner) and then the tribe encounters an evil warlock, who winds up getting killed off when James reads from an old spell book that conjures monsters from other realms. Ed secretly lifts the spell book, which which will definitely be used later on. The character designs for both of these would-be villains are creative and amusing, and proves that placing these calamity-prone Minions in different time periods definitely elicits laughs.

Their journey eventually brings them to the Wild West, where the pursuit of a train robber on horseback attracts their attention. The resourceful tribe overwhelms the posse pursuing the criminal in hopes of becoming his henchmen, while freaking him out by their out-of-place, bizarre appearance. It turns out the criminal was an actor, and their pursuit of him led the Minions to 1920’s Hollywood, when they interrupted the shoot of a silent Western being directed by Max (Christoph Waltz), who’s trying to deliver a hit for Bright Brothers Pictures and the studio’s obese twin brothers, Frank and Elwood Bright (both voiced by Jeff Bridges). Max thinks the film is ruined, yet when he shows the brothers the footage that was shot, they are visibly elated at what they see. Max hurriedly tracks down the Minions, who are now wandering the streets of Hollywood, and soon has them staring in more of his films, turning them into unexpected global sensations.

James, Henry, and Ed embrace their newfound fame and fortune, with the rest of the tribe and that comes with a fabulous Hollywood mansion complete with any possible luxury. However, the advent of sound in motion pictures presents a problem. Because, well…you’ve heard how they sound. There’s a comical montage of attempts to make their shrill voices somehow work in scenes such as a noir film where a private eye seducing a dame, a soldier dying on the Western Front, and the last words of a magnate holding a snow globes. If you know, you know. Sure, these are for whatever cinephiles watching this sequel, and maybe not the younger demographic, but who cares? At least it offers something being fart and toilet humor.

Things go south when Dick takes the Minions to find a home, and this is when the movie missteps by breaking into two subplots, as the tribe face a divide in their ranks. Dick and his group encounter a robot named Dort (Jessie Eisenberg) – who is clearly inspired by Gort from the sci-fi classic, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” – who talks about invading the world yet isn’t very convincing. Dort shares a cramped apartment with a slacker/stoner roommate, and is soon swooned by a local suffragette named Debby (Zoey Deutch) and becomes a lovelorn robot. Meanwhile, James, Henry, and Ed, manage attempt to conjure a kaiju monster out of that spell book for a movie that James thought of called, “Minions & Monsters”, but the only creature that appears is a tiny green Cthulhu-type monster named Gary Orcam Oliver Magma Ichabod the Deceiver, or Goomi (Trey Parker), for short. He expresses his gratitude for being released from his magic prison, but it soon becomes evident why the little miscreant was banished.

The main problem that “Minions & Monsters” has is that it’s short on the “Monsters” and overly reliant on the “Minions”. For the monsters to show up well after the 45-minute mark of a 90-minute movie, well, that’s kind of disappointing, not to mention misleading. If Lynch and Coffin we’re so interested in introducing Dort and his romantic entanglement, maybe they should’ve introduced that earlier in the movie…along with some monsters! All the Hollywood hijinks is fun and comical, but the monster element really feels like an afterthought. The monsters that do show up aren’t even that frightening or formidable. There’s the arrival of Irene in the third act, a massive, multi-eyed gelatinous orange blob who’s the “eater of worlds”, but it just feels like by that time everything is being rushed because they forgot about the “Monsters” in the title. The whole endeavor falters in the third act because of all this third act, where pacing is unsteady and ideas are mismanaged. But, up until then “Minions & Monsters” offers a whole lot of laughs to be found in this colorful and elastic animated outing, continuing the whole franchise with another mercifully short, lively endeavor.

RATING: **1/2