Critics are calling this the best Minions movie yet. I’ll give them the “yet” — it’s better than the others, which is a low bar cleared by about an inch. The one thing I found genuinely funny was the Hollywood meta-humor, and to be fair, that’s not a garnish here — the whole plot is the Minions trying to make their own monster movie in 1927 Hollywood, so the industry jokes and self-deprecating humor flow naturally. Everything else is the usual: gibberish, pratfalls, chaos as content, pitched at kids young enough that “Minion falls down” is the whole joke. Fine for them. There’s nothing underneath it for anyone older than about seven.

Compare that to the Gru-centered movies — the actual Despicable Me line. Those at least attempt a moral spine: found family, a villain learning to be a father, something you could call a theme if you squinted. Not exactly Pixar, but trying, and that effort is the entire difference between a movie and a toy commercial with a runtime. The Minions spinoffs don’t bother. They exist so Minions can be on screen doing Minion things in a new costume — 1920s Hollywood this time, killer robots or pirates next time — and the plot is built after the fact to justify selling tickets.

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Toy Story 5 came out a few weeks ago, and watching it back-to-back with this made the gap between Universal and Pixar impossible to un-see. Universal has clearly greenlit the next dozen Gru/Minions movies, put them on a release schedule, and runs them like an assembly line — a cash cow, milked on a predictable cadence whether or not there’s a story worth telling this time. Pixar waits until it actually has something to say, then makes that movie and stops. They respect the audience enough not to manufacture demand for something hollow. I could be wrong about what’s actually happening in either boardroom — I’m reading tea leaves same as anyone — but that’s the pattern after watching both studios for this long.

Conclusion

If you’re a die-hard Minion fan then you have to see this movie, but there’s nothing that screams see me in the theater from this movie. It will be just fine streaming. Or if you have young kids who don’t care if the story has a spin, then this will keep them entertained and might be more fun than taking them to a park this weekend when it’s a bizzilion degrees outside. (FYI, the air conditioning in my theater was broken. Not fun. I’ve never sweated during a movie before.)

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About The Peetimes: Read a synopsis of first 3 minutes of this movie.

There are extra scenes during, or after, the end credits of Minions & Monsters.

Plot
This is the rambunctious, ridiculous and totally true story of how the Minions conquered Hollywood, became movie stars, lost everything, unleashed monsters onto the world and then banded together to try and save the planet from the mayhem they had just created.

Dan Gardner

Creator and developer of the RunPee app. When something doesn’t work right in the app it’s pretty much his fault. 🙂

Aspiring author. Would like to finish his “Zombie Revelations” trilogy if he could break away for working on RunPee and the cottage he’s building for RunPee Mom.