Despicable Me 4 should be called Minions 6. I’m not judging its quality, but I think it’s a more fitting title that better reflects the current focus of the series and its creator, Illumination Entertainment (which also made Super Mario Bros. and The Secret Life of Pets, but is increasingly Minion-centric). It also shows how rambling the film’s logic is—the chirping banana mascots are the most logical part of the film.
Gru (Steve Carell) hasn’t been a villain for years—but his methods and personality are still very much that—and the former criminal master now works for the Anti-Villain League, tasked with stopping those who want to rule (or destroy) the world.
Gru is now a total family man: since Despicable Me 2, he’s married to the sunny Lucy (Kristen Wiig), and they have a son together. They’re still raising three daughters — Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Elsie Fisher) — who haven’t grown up at all since Gru adopted them in the first movie.
This Simpsons-esque treatment of age isn’t a problem, but it’s a clear sign of who the movie is for: a new crop of kids. It doesn’t even make much of an effort to welcome “older” viewers who are past the age of bright colors and antics.
The ubiquity of the Minions is another sign. Despite the efforts of two Minions spinoffs to highlight Kevin (tall), Stuart (middle-parted), and Bob (bald), the Minions’ personalities are no more distinct than they were 14 years ago. This time around, the Minions accompanying Gru and his family are Ralph, Ron, and Gus, who are just big enough to be distinguishable, but all become indistinguishable.
Yet that’s exactly how the Minions work in this series: a group of interchangeable cylindrical clowns who all speak a baffling language with the occasional Spanish word sprinkled in (though in Despicable Me 4, they’ve added some Italian to their lines, so sorry parents, your kids may soon learn “pomodoro” (tomato) as a catchphrase. As annoying as they can be, the Minions are also the best part of Despicable Me 4 — or the only part that works.
In Gru’s storyline, he plans to catch a cockroach-themed villain by attending his old school reunion: the dastardly Frenchman “Bully Max” (voiced by Will Ferrell, whose accent is only slightly more intelligible than Steve Carell’s). After Max escapes and vows revenge, the Gru family is forced to live incognito, with new identities in a wealthy neighborhood.
What follows is a series of illogical plots, with each character interacting with a neighbor or teacher who never reappears and has no impact on Max’s revenge plot. But Max has to wait a long time before he can appear, and then play various unrelated vignettes of the Gru family. One child goes to school, the other two take karate lessons, and Gru plays tennis with a neighbor (voiced by Stephen Colbert) – but none of these plots have any deeper impact.
It can be said that Despicable Me 4 is aimed at a younger audience than its predecessors, because it always changes the subject quickly, as if assuming that the audience’s attention span can only be short. But at the same time, many of the jokes in the film are aimed at adults who may resonate – gas prices have risen so much in recent years! – but none of the humor comes from the characters themselves.
While Gru and his family are busy adjusting to their new life, there’s another parallel storyline: The Anti-Villain League gives five Minions Marvel-style superpowers and sends them out to patrol the streets. One of them looks a lot like Cyclops from the X-Men, two look a lot like Mr. Fantastic and the Thing from the Fantastic Four, one looks like the Hulk, and the last can fly.
None of this has much to do with Max’s storyline (the villain spends most of his time biding his time), but it’s hard not to feel like “Minions spoofing superheroes” is what Illumination Entertainment and series director Chris Renaud really wanted to do. It’s also one of only two moments in Despicable Me 4 where the jokes connect and the animation feels dynamic and creative. (The other is a heist sequence involving an armed wheelchair, which is unfortunately very short.)
What We Think of Despicable Me: The Beginning
More than Despicable Me: The Beginning, Despicable Me: The Beginning is more of a collection of Minions shorts. It squanders a lot of interesting ideas and comedic situations in favor of a string of disconnected physical comedy that might please viewers still in diapers, but will be hard to stomach for anyone who has to sit through a boring plot and 70s pop culture references. — Siddhant Adlakha, June 30, 2022
Rating: 5
Beyond that, the film often has an artificial look that younger viewers — or anyone, really — won’t find pleasing. Cockroaches appear frequently, and facial features (especially eyebrows and skin texture) are more realistic than in previous Despicable Me movies (a feeling that’s also reinforced by some special effects that mimic real-life photography techniques, such as soft focus). These are cartoon characters, and trying to be realistic only puts them in the uncanny valley.
For better or worse, at least the Minions are consistently goofy and funny in Despicable Me 4, whether in their own Avengers storyline or as background in other people’s insignificant stories. The Minions may not be as popular as they once were, but they’re simple enough that it’s hard to mess them up, even in a movie that has little else to offer.
Conclusion
Despicable Me 4 feels less like a movie and more like a series of disconnected vignettes, with the Minions intercut with Gru’s daily life. The film’s various parts are disconnected and only held together by Illumination Entertainment’s mascots speaking an unidentified language, and continuing the tradition of the past 15 years, these Minions still say some vegetable-related catchphrases and fight around.