‘Minions & Monsters’ scores series-best reviews for Illumination’s animated franchise: ‘Weird, willful popular entertainment’

The Minions are back… in time. The latest animated installment in Illumination’s extended Despicable Me cinematic universe plops those rambunctious yellow troublemakers down in Hollywood circa the 1920s when silent pictures are giving way to sound. Eager to get into the biz themselves, the Minions launch production on a creature feature that promptly unleashes the & Monsters part of the title.

Minions & Monsters is the third entry in the Minions series and the seventh installment in the combined franchise that stared with 2010’s Despicable Me featuring Steve Carell as the not-so-dastardly villain Gru. The new movie boasts a star-powered vocal ensemble that includes Jesse Eisenberg, Jeff Bridges, Zoey Deutch, and Star Wars master George Lucas as himself.

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And as an extended homage to classic Hollywood, the film is a clear bid to bring some Oscar attention to a series that awards voters have largely ignored. To date, only Despicable Me 2 has been invited to the Big Show, with nominations for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, critics are largely pleased by the movie’s nods in the direction of Hollywood history. Minions & Monsters debuted on Rotten Tomatoes with a 93% Fresh rating and holds a generally positive 67 approval score over on Metacritic. Those represent the best scores for the franchise since the original movie.

Despicable Me/Minions critical reaction (by year of release)

Read a sampling of the critical reaction below.

The good

Someone is ready for their close-up: Variety‘s Guy Lodge calls Minions & Monsters a “creative high” for the franchise, celebrating its parallels to films like Sunset Boulevard, Singin’ in the Rain, and The Artist. “The result… is a clear peak for the series,” he writes. “A Minions movie with an actual idea at its core beyond general cheerful chaos, and proof that the pill-shaped devils are served better as stars than as sidekicks.

“The film is such a weird, willful popular entertainment for much of its (blessedly snappy) running time that it holds your goodwill,” Lodge adds. “It’s almost bellissima but it’s fully, madly moviosa, and that’s more than the seventh entry in any animated franchise has a right to be.”

The Wrap’s Drew Taylor is also a fan, observing: “The entire thing feels alive in a way that the Despicable Me franchise, as a whole, hasn’t in a while. What makes the series fun is that it is usually made up of gangbusters comedic moments that more or less add up to a cohesive and entertaining whole. Even when they don’t entirely hang together, there’s something to admire about a franchise that is so intensely gag-focused.

“What makes Minions & Monsters so refreshing is that you aren’t exactly sure where it’s headed next and what it’s going to tackle,” Taylor continues. “Even when it feels like something you might have seen before, the heart of Minions & Monsters shines through and there are enough curveballs to keep you entertained.”

And RogerEbert.com’s Clint Worthington calls the third romp “delightful” in his 3.5-star review. “In an age where it feels like no one remembers or cares about the history of the medium they enjoy… it’s heartening to feel like Minions & Monsters might just expose kids to the cinematic forebears that made their beloved Minions possible. And, in so doing, made the snappiest, most cohesive, and entertaining entry in this series to date.

“These little guys are simply the purest and latest distillation of the very impulses that have made cinema one of mankind’s most enduring art forms,” Worthington concludes. “Characters in motion, working hard to entertain, distract, and provide a communal experience for those who enjoy them.”

The bad

Over in The Guradian, Rafaela Bassili found the Minions’ mischief making to be largely tiring. “Had the film been contained by its clever premise — the Minions must fight to preserve their place in Hollywood — it might have achieved the crystalline simplicity that is a hallmark of good children’s films,” she writes. “But aiming to both lead the Minions in a newer, smarter direction and appease the gibberish-fest expectations set by the franchise, [director] Pierre Coffin bites off more than he can chew. As a result, Minions & Monsters disappointingly circles back to where it started.

“The Minions fall back into their old ways, and the second and third acts — cluttered with extraneous characters and absurd situations involving an ancient spell book from a fallen master; a robot; and, if you can believe it, the women’s rights movement — fail to cohere,” she adds. “By the end of the film, any grasp on essence is lost: the Minions wind up saving the day as heroes. Aren’t they supposed to serve a villain?”

Kimberly Jones concurs in The Austin Chronicle, writing: “Film nerds will savor Minions & Monsters’ hat tips to early cinema luminaries like Muybridge, Lumière, and Méliès, plus cameos from the likes of Buster Keaton, Orson Welles, and Metropolis’ Maschinenmensch; if one kid comes out of this thing saying, “Mommy, tell me more about German Expressionism,” then that sounds like a win.

“Ultimately, though, the Hollywood setting is just window dressing for a fairly generic disaster movie,” she adds. “Noisy, busy, eventually brutalizing in its relentlessness. M&M makes a bid for the anticness of classic Looney Tunes, but misses the essential part that a contrasting quiet plays in comedy.”

But the harshest words for the Minions come from Mark Kennedy in the Associated Press, who expresses little patience for another “love letter to Hollywood” in his 1.5-star review. “The movie has playful references to old screen gods — Harold Lloyd dangling from the hands of a clock and Charlie Chaplin swallowed by the gears of a mechanical system — along Hollywood nods to Casablanca… but the kids in the audience won’t get them and their parents are just too tired. Harold Lloyd jokes don’t hit as hard in 2026,” he sniffs.

“‘Hooray for Hollywood’ is on the soundtrack and that might have been the subtitle for the movie itself,” Kennedy adds. “There are some people whose eyes get moist thinking about picking up a film camera and following their muse, having their work play in a dark theater to cheers. And then there are others who just want to get on with it already.”

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