DESPICABLE ME 4: Nothing New With The Gru Crew

I realized many years ago that Illumination’s animated films are all about gags over stories. With this in mind, I decided to brace myself for Despicable Me 4. I knew Illumination wouldn’t stray from their sure-fire method of box office success with freewheeling absurdity. Any hope of a cohesive story was gone, made evident by the studio’s track record and the marketing for this picture. Perhaps this will be the sequel that wins me over for recognizing the gags and not the meandering story.

I was wrong. My expectations were low, but I should have lowered them further. This franchise has only grown more noisy with age, where there isn’t so much of a plot as there is busy work to get to the next dose of slapstick or pop culture reference. In this fourth film, the mounting characters and story detours pile up so high that I was exhausted before the reliable minion gags even arrived.

Too Many Kids

I recalled the first Despicable Me film and how it was a sufficiently cute tale of the villain Gru (Steve Carell) changing his way to raise three orphaned girls. In this fourth film, however, Gru and Lucy (Kristen Wiig) finally have a child, thanks to the DNA of a reformed villain. With another mouth to feed (that apparently shares Gru’s genetic penchant for evil), there’s enough to the premise for Gru’s adopted kids to feel uncertain about having a baby in the house. But while Gru still seems to acknowledge Agnes (Madison Skyy Polan), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), the movie seems to forget about them. They’re given so little to do and are barely acknowledged within a script that doesn’t have time for them.

In addition to the baby hogging the spotlight, there’s also the new threat of Gru’s latest antagonist. Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell) is poised as a threat to Gru, with his French accent and cockroach theme. He wants revenge on Gru for a reason that is not ridiculous enough to be amusing. Maxime’s quest for revenge leads to the criminal targeting Gru’s family, who must now go into hiding with their organization’s witness protection program. But wait, there’s more! There are so many plotlines that fizzle and peter out into little more than gag machines running low on funny fuel.

Old Dog, Old Tricks

Gru attempts to fit in with his new neighborhood, but the teenager next door, Poppy Prescott (Joey King), is onto Gru. She knows all about the villain and wants his help to get a chance to attend the school of villainy. Through this arc, the film’s Baby Boomer humor becomes most evident in the aged references. Poppy’s scheme involves swiping a honey badger, and Gru recites the honey badger meme, which is as old as Poppy. Even older than Poppy is her favoring of playing “Dance Dance Revolution” to a DragonForce song. Moments like that really make Poppy’s Boomer-blasting comments ring extra hollow.

With their uninspired usage, Gru’s Minions (voiced by Pierre Coffin) feel like a heavier afterthought. There might’ve been some excitement to see what the squat, yellow creatures could get into when granted superpowers. Sadly, their powers, akin to Marvel Comics characters, are presented without much cleverness. It is very telling that this film tries to make the meta-joke that people are tired of superheroes, expressed through the failures of the Minions to protect the public. I don’t think I fully believe in superhero fatigue, but I was fatigued by the super-Minions after a few gags.

But what about the three girls? They’re treated like the annoying kids you can’t wait to send off to daycare and not think about until much later. Edith and Agnes are given a one-scene bit of attending a karate class run by a teacher who takes his strip-mall dojo too seriously. There’s nothing new here. As for Margo, she has problems adjusting to her new school and suffers the humiliation of getting a glitter bomb in her locker. It’s a humiliating moment of relatability for anybody who has been a new kid in school. Well, it would be better if the film only had that scene instead of Margo explaining it to Gru. Margo is so unessential to this film’s running time that her arc happens entirely off-screen.

Wasted Potential

Everything in Despicable Me 4 feels like squandered opportunities. Consider the subplot for Lucy, which is about making enemies with a local woman after ruining her hair. They frantically chase through a grocery store as Lucy zips around corners with her grocery cart. The pop culture reference for this scene is Terminator 2, based on the pursuing angry woman who runs similar to the T-1000, with a T2-style soundtrack to boot. But the gag never fully takes off, even stumbling to make the accurate transition as the cart chase turns into a car chase.

There is so much going on in this film, and none of it seems to matter. Gru’s neighbor is a tennis-loving upper-class jerk with whom Gru attempts to bond. You’d be right if you expected Gru to get in a tennis match where the Minions chuck tennis balls at him. You’d be wrong if you think this arc goes beyond that gag. I’ve barely even mentioned the overarching plot of Gru hoping his baby will show him some fatherly affection. That dynamic is presented in a routine series of silly bits with Gru and his baby. I didn’t even know whether it was all on the baby to grow as a character. I guess he has to. After all, the film makes no room for any organic development.

A Tedious Typhoon of Lukewarm Comedy

All of these problems I could easily overlook if the film were at least funny. I’m sure that’s the only thing the target audience cares about for this film. I wanted to love the film on that count, because I sure wouldn’t get a cohesive story. Yet I found myself so bored by the endless exposition, all in service of mounting plots that’ll get forgotten about in the shuffle of Minion babble and Gru’s stammering. The film can’t focus on any plotline for more than a few minutes before it churns out a new one, almost as if the film is bored and needs another road to travel for more jokes, few of which can generate a smile, let alone a laugh.

Even the cute moments are so lacking that the movie has to give cues to tell you when it’s appropriate to gush. Several moments built for cuteness cut to reaction shots of characters going “aww,” holding the same hollow level of emotional resonance as canned laughter. A genuinely cute film shouldn’t have to stop dead and tell the audience what they’re looking at is cute. I almost expected the film to add a laugh track to tell the audience when to laugh as well.

The best thing I can say about the film is that the staging is quite grand. An elaborate shot zooms through the anti-villain HQ as the Minions make a mess of the many offices with all their cartoonish antics. There’s so much going on in this scene that it’s worth going frame-by-frame to catch every bit. But all these gags are par for the course of what we’d expect out of the pint-sized troublemakers. Photocopying their butts feels like par-for-the-course tomfoolery for the yellow icons.

Conclusion

Despicable Me 4 coasts on its success by adding more characters, more plotlines, and no new cleverness. This lucrative animated series rarely builds on anything it has established unless you consider its ever-expanding roster of characters. By the film’s end, the obligatory musical dance sequence dusts off every villain from the past Despicable Me and Minions movies. These cameos likely triggered nostalgia within the audience who had been following these films for 14 years. However, all I can see is the squandered salvo of characters pushed into patchwork storytelling with ho-hum comedy.

Despicable Me 4 is currently streaming on Peacock.