Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (September 6, 2026)
16 years after Despicable Me created its own little alternate universe, the franchise continues with 2016’s Minions & Monsters. Here we get the seventh entry in the broader series and the third under the Minions sub-banner.
Persistently in search of an evil boss to obey, the Minions always accidentally kill their masters. Along the way, Minions James (voiced by Pierre Coffin), Henry (Coffin again) and Ed (Coffin again again) obtain a spellbook from a warlock they served.
In the 1920s, the Minions inadvertently wind up as movie stars and major celebrities. After the “talkies” sour their careers, the Minions embark on their attempt to make a horror/sci-fi flick with real monsters conjured via that magical tome, a decision that comes with major repercussions beyond their cinematic efforts.
As noted earlier, audiences have seen a lot of Gru and the Minions from summer 2010 to date. In addition to the seven feature films, Illumination has produced 20 shorts with these characters.
Have audiences finally reached Despicable Me overload? Perhaps, as Monsters turned into the lowest-grossing entry of the seven.
Though a hit, the 2010 Despicable Me didn’t become a box office behemoth, as it took in “only” $544 million worldwide. However, the franchise soon became huge, as from 2013’s Despicable Me 2 through 2024’s Despicable Me 4, all five of those flicks earned between $940 million and $1.159 billion total.
Naturally, one would assume Monsters would get up around $900 million or better. However, it topped out at a “mere” $513 million, the lowest total of the series, especially if we consider inflation since the first movie earned $544 million 16 years ago.
Like its predecessors, Monsters came with a reasonable-for-this-era budget, as it cost $85 million. As such, its $513 million meant it still turned a tidy profit.
However, I imagine Universal and Illumination feel concerned that Monsters showed such a substantial box office decline compared to its predecessors. I see no official indication of a Despicable Me 5 in production, though I suspect they’d go for at least one more flick before they potentially throw in the towel.
Other than possible franchise exhaustion, I would speculate narrative confusion might’ve turned off audiences. 2015’s Minions took place in the late 1960s and 2022’s The Rise of Gru came set in the mid-1970s and both offered clear prequels to set up the situations we first saw in 2010’s Despicable Me.
Logically, a third Minions effort would take us into the 1980s. Instead, Monsters makes the semi-perplexing choice to go back in time about 40 years prior to the 2015 flick and it also focuses on an alternate Minions tribe versus the characters audiences already knew.
I suspect some combination of all these factors contributed to the lackluster – for the franchise, at least – ticket sales of Monsters. However, none of that makes it a bad movie, as it becomes pretty darned entertaining.
As a look at those six prior reviews indicates, I never much cottoned to the wider Despicable Me series. Rise of Gru worked best of the bunch, but the others ranged from “moderately entertaining” to “pretty blah”.
Nothing about Monsters allows it to tower above the others, and I’d say it probably works about as well as Rise did and maybe a little better. I found that one to offer a funny but flawed tale, and the same holds true for Monsters.
Nonetheless, given how unenthused – or worse – I felt about the other five projects, that becomes relatively high praise. Monsters fails to make me a big fan of the Minions, but at least it delivers a lively romp.
Though a nearly incoherent one much of the time. While the other two Minions flicks played fast and loose with how they depicted their time periods, Monsters will drive anyone with an understanding of history bonkers.
Though ostensibly set mainly in the late 1920s, Monsters picks and chooses events to include almost at random. This means references that dot the 1910s through 1950s, all with zero logic behind them.
I get it: in a universe where little yellow weirdos are accepted as part of society, we can see all these chronologically spotty choices as an aspect of the gag. Perhaps the Despicable Me flicks take place on an alternate Earth where the events of the 1910s to 1950s co-mingled naturally.
Whatever the case, this turns into an instance where the more one knows about these time periods, the more perplexed one will become. It seems best to ignore the anachronisms and just go with the flow.
Monsters also provides a narrative that lacks real coherence. While much of it follows James, Henry and Ed through their Hollywood adventure, we also watch the other members of their Minions tribe as they pursue another “Big Boss” to obey.
This leads them to Dort (Jesse Eisenberg), a being who may be an alien robot or he could be a nerd in a tin can. We watch as the other Minions follow Dort and also see dorky Dort fall in love with suffragette hottie (Zoey Deutch).
Eventually the two plots coalesce but honestly, the Dort side of things usually tends to feel superfluous, and the 1950s lean of that theme also creates the most nagging anachronism. Even without the basic fact that sci-fi of the sort Dort evokes didn’t exist in the 1920s, those scenes just lack much real need to exist.
Despite all my nit-picking, Monsters throws too much comedy at the wall that sticks to really begrudge it these filmmaking issues. Like its siblings, it moves at a breakneck pace and packs in tons of clever gags.
Monsters also boasts an excellent cast. In addition to those I already named, we find Jeff Bridges, Christoph Waltz, Allison Janney, Trey Parker, Phil LaMarr and Bobby Moynihan.
That’s a strong roster and they bring flair to their roles. Of course, Coffin’s work as all the different Minions continues to delight.
Even with its flaws, Minions & Monsters becomes a lively comedic romp. It might not make me rethink my less than delighted view of most of its siblings but it turns into a brisk and engaging piece of semi-inspired silliness.
Footnote: some added Minions antics pop up during the end credits. Once you see the one with naked Gru, these conclude and nothing appears after that.
