Despicable Me 4 review

DESPICABLE ME 4: 

MINION MAYHEM DOMINATES SUBPAR FOURTH ENTRY! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Gru, his Minions, and his newborn son in Despicable Me 4

 

            Ex-supervillain, Gru (voiced by Steve Carell-Anchorman 1 and 2, The Office, Foxcatcher) and his mischievous Minions are back (again) in Despicable Me 4, the latest installment of Illumination’s Despicable Me film series dating back to 2010. I have to say it’s quite impressive how long this franchise has been around and that it continues to be successful 14 years after the release of the first movie, Minions make bank! 

            The first Despicable Me was a solid animated feature with a lot of creativity, humor, and heart about a supervillain turned hero and loving father which helped establish Illumination as a strong competitor in computer animation among the likes of Pixar and DreamWorks. Its 2013 sequel, Despicable Me 2 was a worthy follow-up that introduced Gru’s bubbly spy partner turned wife, Lucy (voiced by Kristen Wiig-Bridesmaids, The Looney Tunes Show, The Skeleton Twins) and more focus on comedy this time around, but the comedy made me laugh so I don’t care.  

            The Minions spin-off movies from 2015 and 2022 pale in comparison to the first two Despicable Me films but both had a fair amount of laughs and visual sight gags that made me smile. 2017’s Despicable Me 3 is the weakest of all the films with standard kids movie gags and an unfocused plot mostly consisting of wacky scenarios rather than a narrative, but there was an incredible, scene-stealing Trey Parker as the voice of an 80s-themed supervillain which alone makes the movie worth seeking out. 

Which brings us to Despicable Me 4, the first Despicable Me film released in seven years, not counting 2022’s Minions: The Rise of Gru. This wasn’t exactly high on my agenda, but since I reviewed most of the other movies, why not review this one too? 

While I can’t say this is an awful movie and I’m sure kids will get a lot of enjoyment out of it, but if you thought Despicable Me 3’s plot was unfocused wait until you hear about this one which we’ll get to in a moment. I wouldn’t mind an unfocused plot if the comedy and/or heart made up for it…not so much, this is a standard and surprisingly soulless Despicable Me movie despite tons of talented people working on it. 

The film follows Gru, Lucy, their adopted girls Margo (voiced by Miranda Cosgrove-School of Rock, Drake & Josh, iCarly), Edith (voiced by Dana Gaier-The Ice Cream Truck), and Agnes (voiced by Madison Polan), and Gru and Lucy’s newborn son, Gru Jr. living a happy life as a family. But when an enemy from Gru’s past known as Maxime Le Mal (voiced by Will Ferrell-Saturday Night Live, Blades of Glory, Megamind) escapes from prison and seeks revenge on him and his family, Gru and Lucy’s boss and Anti Villain League leader Silas Ramsbottom (Hehe, bottom!) (voiced by Steve Coogan-Night at the Museum trilogy, Tropic Thunder, The Trip trilogy) relocates the family to a safe house to hide from Maxime. 

Add in a bunch of subplots such as Lucy working in a hair salon and gloriously screwing it up, Gru bonding with his son who doesn’t like him very much, a group of Minions getting superpowers and becoming Mega Minions, Gru getting roped into helping his neighbor’s daughter who is also an aspiring supervillain pull off a heist, and a crazy plan where Maxime tries to conquer the world with an army of giant cockroaches and plots to turn Gru’s son into a cockroach mutant unless Gru, his family, and Minions can stop him (You can see the problem with this movie, right?). 

The film also features the voices of Joey King (Ramona and Beezus, Oz: The Great and Powerful, Bullet Train) as Poppy Prescott, Sofía Vergara (Happy Feet Two, Chef, Strays) as Maxime’s femme fatale girlfriend Valentina, Stephen Colbert (Saturday Night Live, The Colbert Report, Monsters VS Aliens) as Perry Prescott, and Chloe Fineman (Saturday Night Live, Babylon, Megalopolis) as Patsy Prescott. 

Overall, Despicable Me 4 is unfortunately the worst of the Despicable Me films but I wouldn’t consider it a terrible movie because it’s clearly intended to give younger audiences a good time and it does the job fine enough. If I was a kid watching it, I’d probably like it okay, but the scatterbrained plot and subpar humor compared to earlier entries is what’s holding me back. 

This feels more like a collection of scenarios rather than a coherent story to the point where you forget certain plot details or characters because of how the movie is structured. Yes, Despicable Me 3’s plot is messy and the comedy isn’t especially that funny (Trey Parker-voiced villain not withstanding), but there was at least a beginning, middle, and end and I was able to follow it, here the plot gets lost constantly over the course of the movie to the point where I started questioning what the movie wanted me to be invested in and what it was supposed to be about. 

I wouldn’t mind if the plot was unfocused if the comedy is any good and while there are certainly some funny setups here, I found the humor really lacking this time around. I chuckled a few times, but nothing in this movie made me laugh out loud and was even disappointed by some jokes that had hilarious buildup but delivered no payoff. 

The biggest offence of this is when Lucy is working as a hairstylist and she accidentally burns her first customer’s hair and makes a run for it after setting the sprinklers off. That’s a good setup for a running joke in the movie and I was looking forward to seeing what the hair screw up actually looked like later on, but then the customer encounters Lucy in a grocery store with her head bandaged up and tries to kill her (Set to the Terminator theme for some reason) and she doesn’t remove the bandages to reveal what happened to her head, she also doesn’t appear in the movie again after this…weak! 

Despicable Me 3 didn’t exactly have the best comedy either, but Trey Parker voicing Balthasar Bratt and with me being a humongous South Park fan was the most consistently funny thing in the movie (And the only reason to watch that movie). Unfortunately, despite Will Ferrell being a massively talented and funny actor (Whose voice fits perfectly with animation), Maxime is a rather underwhelming villain and downgrade from the last movie. 

If you were to tell me Will Ferrell was going to voice a cockroach-themed supervillain with a French accent in a Despicable Me movie, I’d say “That is crazy and weird, I want to see it!”. But because the movie is focused on comedic scenarios, he’s not given enough time to make audiences hate him, the material given to him isn’t that funny, and even the film itself forgets he exists sometimes so he ends up not leaving much of an impression. 

Despicable Me 4 gives what it advertises, lots of Minion shenanigans, heavy focus on comedy and wacky situations, and baby jokes. This is a fine “Drop Your Kids Off” movie as they’ll likely have fun with it, but if you’re looking for a “Family” movie, Inside Out 2!