“Minions & Monsters”: A Loud Reference Feast With Zero Imagination
Yes, there’s another one already. Grab your Tylenol, because Minions & Monsters is here to give you a bigger headache than your credit card bill.
Last week we discussed the overexploitation of franchises with the release of the fifth installment of Toy Story. However, the first weekend of July brought a strong contender to theaters, with another franchise that, while not as old, has had a number of sequels over the last fifteen years. We’re talking, of course, about Despicable Me.
The original movie starring Gru and his adoptive daughters came out in 2010 (when I was still part of the target demographic) and spawned three sequels, the last one released in 2024. But one of the things that stuck out the most about the franchise was the minions, Gru’s yellow sidekicks. The popularity of the characters resulted in them getting their own prequel series of movies, starting in 2015.
What is Minions & Monsters About?
This third installment features a tribe of minions trying to find a villain master to serve. The problem is that the two troublemakers of the group, James and Henry, always manage to ruin their chances.
A random series of events takes the yellow creatures to Hollywood, where they reach great success as actors in silent films, until the introduction of “talkies” buries their careers.
Determined to make their own movie instead, but finding no backing for it, James and Henry have an idea: summon monsters from a spellbook so they can star in their film.
How Much is Too Much?
No one who subjects themselves to a Minions movie expects a good plot, but we’re reaching a point where the absurdity is becoming hard to bear. For a while now, Illumination has focused on doing something for kids more than for families as a whole. Gone are the days of the first Despicable Me installments, where the stories were about parenting, families sticking together, and learning to do the right thing. Minions & Monsters is not a coherent story; it’s just content: an hour and a half of the minions being loud and annoying, with the expected simplistic humor.
To cover for the lack of plot, they use the most popular strategy right now: inserting references. It would have been fun had there been only two or three, but the entirety of Minions & Monsters is covered in references to Hollywood films from the Golden Era. I think even the last Scary Movie had fewer references. Is the industry really so artistically bankrupt that the only thing they can offer is a reference to something better?
Kids like it because it’s remarkably easy to follow and the animation is bright and colorful, but the drop in quality becomes more evident with every new release. Minions: Rise of Gru from 2022, while also nonsensical, was pretty entertaining within its chaos. On the other hand, 2024’s Despicable Me 4 was pure boredom. Minions & Monsters is even worse.
I’m aware I’m not the target of this, but it saddens me to see the slow decay of a franchise that, while not perfect, used to hold so much charm. Now it’s just corporate slop, an easy way to make money.
Box Office Numbers
There was some concern during Minions & Monsters’s opening weekend, due to the film’s underwhelming domestic numbers. But Illumination movies do not have the overinflated budgets that have become a norm in Disney/Pixar projects, which usually sets them up for success.
In its almost two weeks in theaters, Minions & Monsters has grossed $294,580,468 worldwide, on an $85,000,000 production budget. The July season will be taken over by The Odyssey this weekend and Spider-Man: Brand New Day later on, but there are not that many options for kids (only Toy Story 5 and the Moana live-action), so the yellow creatures might have good legs.
For now, if you want to overstimulate your kid, Minions & Monsters is right there. Compared to seeing the Rock with CGI muscles, it may be the less developmentally destructive option.
