‘Minions & Monsters’ review: The half-pint heroes return for a gleefully anarchic animation set in 1920s Hollywood

Dirs: Pierre Coffin, Patrick Delage. US. 2026. 90mins

Since their debut in 2010’s Despicable Me, the diminutive Minions have become superstars in their own right. Having appeared in four Despicable Me features and now three spin-offs, alongside shorts, TV series, video games and theme-park attractions, they have a legion of fans anxiously awaiting this next adventure. For them, Minions & Monsters will deliver in spades as a breathless knockabout comedy that plays out in the heyday of 1920s Hollywood. And while its cute protagonists and slapstick comedy are aimed squarely at the family market, older viewers will find much to enjoy in its historical and cultural details.

Outstanding, textured world building

The Despicable Me-Minions juggernaut is the highest gossing animation franchise of all time, earning over $5.5bn collectively. (The most successful among the seven features is currently 2015’s Minions, with $1.2bn). Rolling out globally after an Annecy premiere, Minions & Monsters (which shares its name with a 2021 short film included on 2022’s Minions: Rise Of Gru home entertainment release) should do equally as well at the box office, and could even see the franchise get some awards attention for the first time. Indeed the self-referential narrative – which recalls elements of fellow rowdy animation Teen Titans Go! To The Movies (2018) – rather pointedly suggests that it’s about time the Minions get some genuine industry recognition.

A framing device takes place within a movie museum in which, among exhibits of luminaries like Orson Welles and George Lucas – the latter the subject of a great early gag – there is a statue of Minion pair James and Henry. When it becomes clear that the visitors have no idea why they are being celebrated, enthusiastic museum guide Olivia (Alison Janney) proceeds to set them right – and this entertaining origin story plays out on screen.

This tale follows a different tribe of Minions (all voiced, as usual, by returning co-director/writer Pierre Coffin) from the one seen making their way to 1960s New York in Minions and subsequently joining forces with Steve Carrell’s Gru in The Rise Of Gru and the Despicable Me films. Here, James, Henry and their pals wander the globe in search of a suitable evil master; a funny, eventful path that takes them through wizards, mummies and ogres until they wash up in Los Angeles in the 1920s. Accidentally crashing a film set, and winning over both German emigre director Max (Christoph Waltz) and larger-than-life movie moguls The Bright Brothers (both voiced by Jeff Bridges), they quickly find themselves the new darlings of the town.

But, of course, what goes up must come down with a crash – in this case, with the coming of sound and the largely incomprehensible Minionese failing to translate on screen (even if the Minions can make themselves understood to those around them). With their dreams in tatters, James and Henry determine to make their own film titled ‘Minion And Monsters’ and, with the help of a stolen spellbook, conjure up some real-life scary creatures to star alongside them. It’s not long, however, before events go very much off-script.

As with all of this franchise’s previous instalments, the screenplay (by Coffin and co-writer Brian Lynch) is simple even when it splits into two strands: as James and Henry attempt to make their movie, the rest of the Minions fall in with Dolt (Jesse Eisenberg), who may or may not be an intergalactic robot intent on world domination. Theres a lot going on story wise – perhaps too much at times – but it’s easy to follow and smartly, snappily edited by Gregory Perler.

The real depth comes from the outstanding, textured world building which renders 1920s Hollywood in temple-like studios, fantastical soundstages, razzle dazzle parties and lush screening rooms. It’s positively heaving with nods to trailblazers from Buster Keaton, the Lumiere brothers and Georges Melies to Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Jaws and plum-voiced newsreels. There are also references to wider cultural movements like the Suffragettes, but the film never gets bogged down in these details – they are an intricate, pleasing backdrop to the knockabout comedy for which the franchise is known.

The now familiar bright and slick animation lends itself well to this busy milieu, and the thick and fast gags mostly land (aside from a final reel meta-coda which fails to convincingly stick). Crucially, the Minions are as loveable and watchable as ever, with Harry and Jack being particularly endearing as the anarchic creatives who won’t let anything get in the way of a good story – not even world-eating multi-eyed Blob monsters.