Minions & Monsters is Illumination's 2026 entry in the Despicable Me franchise, a comedy where two Minions, James and Henry, wander out of a stolen-spellbook mishap and onto a 1920s Hollywood film set, where a chaotic accident turns them into movie stars overnight - until talkies arrive and Minionese stops working as scripted dialogue. Directed by Pierre Coffin, it is also, by Rotten Tomatoes count, the best-reviewed film the Minions series has produced. This review of Minions & Monsters looks at why that critical high sits next to a commercial low, and at why the film is still the widest-playing title in Athens cinemas nearly three months after it opened.
What Happens in Minions & Monsters
The setup splits neatly in two. The first half plays as an origin story - the Minions' tribe wandering the distant past in search of an evil master - before dropping James and Henry into Old Hollywood, where director Max (voiced by Christoph Waltz) and studio bosses played by Jeff Bridges turn their on-set chaos into box-office gold. The second half follows the pair after fame dries up: broke and directionless, they steal a spellbook from a former boss and summon real monsters to star in their own picture, with a cowardly robot voiced by Jesse Eisenberg and a suffragette character carrying a parallel subplot. Zoey Deutch, Trey Parker and Allison Janney round out the cast.
Where the Film Earns Its Reviews - and Where It Doesn't
The Old Hollywood stretch is where the film is doing real work rather than franchise maintenance: critics singled it out as the richest passage of both storytelling and sustained gags, built on genuine affection for silent-era filmmaking rather than a checklist of studio references. Bridges plays the two rival movie moguls with clear enjoyment, and Waltz gives his director more warmth than the part strictly needs - two performances doing more than the material asks of them.
The back half is where the reviews split. Several critics who praised the Hollywood section found the robot-and-suffragette subplot flat by comparison, a parallel story that never quite justifies the screen time it takes from the funnier half of the film. That unevenness is the honest read on Minions & Monsters - a comedy that is, in its best stretch, the most cohesive thing the franchise has produced, and in its back half, a film coasting on a premise it already spent.
Still Filling Athens Screens
In Mood's screening data, Minions & Monsters is playing at 30 of the 99 Athens cinemas Mood is tracking screenings for this week - a wider venue footprint than any other film currently showing in the city, including Resident Evil, which logs more raw screenings (282) but is confined to 24 venues. That matters more than the raw count: a film sitting in the fewest gaps across the city's screens three months after release is a different story than one riding an opening-week release.
The heaviest concentration is at Village Shopping & More in Renti, which alone accounts for a fifth of this week's Athens screenings. Option Cinemas in Ilion and further runs at Village's Metro Mall and The Mall Athens locations fill out most of the rest - closer to how a studio schedules a film it still expects to sell than how it treats something already winding down.
How It Stacks Up Against the Rest of Athens's Screens
The 165 screenings behind that footprint keep Minions & Monsters clear of the next family title in Mood's data, the 134-screening Parallel Tales, and of Fatherland's awards-circuit run at 102. Both of those titles opened more recently, a gap that matters given Minions & Monsters is nearly three months into its run, not riding an opening week.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Minions & Monsters worth watching without kids?
The Old Hollywood section works on its own terms for adults who know the silent-era references it is drawing on, carried by Jeff Bridges and Christoph Waltz playing broader than usual. The back half, built around the robot-and-suffragette subplot, leans more squarely toward the film's younger audience.
How long is Minions & Monsters?
The film runs 90 minutes, in line with the rest of the Despicable Me franchise's shorter runtimes rather than the closer-to-two-hours length of most current animated releases.
Is Minions & Monsters a sequel to Despicable Me?
It's a spin-off entry in the same franchise rather than a direct sequel - the Minions' tribe carries over, but the plot is a standalone story set largely in the 1920s rather than a continuation of Gru's arc.
Where can I find Minions & Monsters showtimes in Athens?
Screenings run across roughly 30 Athens cinemas this week, from multiplex chains like Village and Option to smaller neighbourhood screens. In Mood's wider count, Athens has 103 different films across roughly 2,000 upcoming screenings this week, and Minions & Monsters is the only title in the five highest-volume films that isn't a recent arrival - everything else in that top tier opened within the last few weeks.
What is Minions & Monsters' Rotten Tomatoes score?
The film opened in the high-80s to low-90s on Rotten Tomatoes, a studio and franchise record, even as its box-office run closed as the franchise's lowest-grossing entry.
For everything else currently playing across the city, browse what's on in Athens cinemas on Mood.
