Commercially, the Minions are undeniable. First unleashed in Despicable Me (2010), the canary-yellow, gibberish-speaking mini-monsters have, over six features — four Despicable Me movies and two Minions spinoffs — earned more than $5.5 billion worldwide, making them the highest-grossing animated franchise of all time. The seventh, Minions & Monsters, which hits U.S. theaters July 1, looks to extend that dominance.

But that box office haul has not translated into much industry recognition or critical respect. The chaos-creating characters from Illumination Entertainment rarely enter the awards conversation, and there is little appetite to treat them as anything more than disposable entertainment. Even as their cultural footprint continues to grow, the Minions are seldom acknowledged as one of the more distinctive and enduring creations of 21st century cinema.

Minions & Monsters attempts to challenge that perception in its own unique way, primarily through plenty of gags. Early reactions out of the Annecy film festival, where Minions & Monsters premiered June 21, have been strong, with some reviewers calling it the franchise’s most accomplished entry. The movie itself goes further, arguing the Minions are not just money-making merchandising machines but deserve their place in the Hollywood canon.

Pierre Coffin, making his first solo directing effort after co-helming all three Despicable Me films and the first Minions, has constructed a film that doubles as a love letter to cinematic history. The story links the creatures’ anarchic physical comedy to silent-era pioneers such as Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. An early madcap Minions & Monsters sequence has the yellow horde smashing through 1920s Hollywood, with visual gags quoting Modern Times, Steamboat Bill, Jr., Safety Last! and other landmarks of early screen comedy.

“The Minions were always slapstick-inspired,” says Coffin. “The physical comedy of slapstick, invented in that era, is the base of everything that is funny in cartoon/animated films. We always look at what did Keaton do, how did Chaplin move.”

Coffin layers references ranging from Citizen Kane to Casablanca, alongside nods to Universal monster movies and The Blob. John Powell’s score similarly moves through the orchestral traditions of Hollywood’s Golden Age, underscoring set pieces that shift between western, horror and silent-era pastiche.

Even the plot reframes the Minions within film history, imagining a breakaway trio of the denim-clad critters becoming overnight silent movie stars. Their success, however, doesn’t survive the transition to sound. It seems a Minion can do many things — speaking English, however, is not one of them. (As always, Coffin voices every Minion in his signature toddler-meets-pidgin babble.)

Minions & Monsters opens with a Universal Studios tour that doubles as a crash course in Hollywood history, winding past relics from the silent era through the studio system. The museum scene includes one of the film’s best sight gags, involving Star Wars creator George Lucas, appearing as himself.

“When Pierre was describing the scene, I thought, what about George?” says Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri. “I’d met him once and I knew he was a fan of the Minions. But I don’t think any of us were counting on him saying yes.”

Lucas recorded his dialogue during a brief visit to Paris.

“George and his family were passing by Paris,” Coffin recalls. “We recorded him. We had him for like half an hour. It was really weird, because it was this really tiny sound studio and everyone was like: ‘Whoa, what’s George Lucas doing here?'”

The cameo is particularly apt. If Star Wars became the pop cultural touchstone for Generation X, the Minions have arguably become a comparable fixture for Gen Alpha.

That generational pull became especially visible with 2022’s Minions: The Rise of Gru, when teenagers arrived at cinemas in suits as part of the viral #GentleMinions trend, transforming screenings into participatory events. Universal embraced the #GentleMinions movement, promoting the trend on the film’s official TiKTok account.

The film opened to $125.2 million domestically over the Fourth of July weekend, setting a record for the Independence Day frame.

“One of the cool things that we’ve experienced is that the children who first experienced Despicable Me in 2010 — as they became teenagers, a percentage of them just became disinterested,” Meledandri says. “And then, right around 2020, we saw this huge return of an audience we normally don’t think of as the audience for an animated film. It was as if that generation was reclaiming what they feel is the popular culture of their youth.”

Despite that appeal, the franchise has so far received little in the way of industry recognition. Six films in and just two Oscar nominations, both for 2013’s Despicable Me 2 (best animated feature and best original song for Pharrell Williams’ “Happy”), with zero wins. Minions & Monsters nods to the Academy snubs with a recurring gag imagining a Minion director receiving a Golden Banana trophy.

Jokes aside, the question remains as to why the Minions, one of the few global movie icons created this century, still can’t get no respect.

Part of the answer may simply be category. The animated feature Oscar has tended to go to films that signal tonal ambition — think Pixar’s Wall-E or Inside Out — or formal experimentation, like 2025 winner Flow. The Minions have never operated that way. Illumination’s model has stayed close to what it was in 2010: make kids laugh, keep the adults entertained, move fast, repeat. Even the classic film references in Minions & Monsters are less about prestige than punchlines.

“I didn’t want to revolutionize anything [with the new film],” admits Coffin. “Having this one happen in Hollywood in the ‘20s was just like having the first Minions film being set in England in the ‘60s, and the second in San Francisco’s in the ‘70s. We could throw the Minions in there and get ideas from that environment.”

It remains to be seen whether Minions & Monsters will bridge the gap between the franchise’s box office dominance and its cultural impact, on one hand, and its standing within the industry, on the other. Illumination, and Coffin, are unlikely to care — they’ll keep making the case, one gag at a time.