McDaniel
“Despicable Me 4” delivers an entertaining, silly goose time that will keep the kids laughing, and parents nodding along with a sense of deja vu.
Gru (Steve Carell) and his family are happily living the dream, having recently welcomed baby Gru Jr. to the family. Things are great, until Gru reignites a rivalry from his youth by arresting super villain Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell). No surprise, Maxime immediately escapes and vows revenge on Gru.
This is the sixth film in the series, if you count the “Minions” movies, and it’s clear they’re running out of fresh ideas that can carry a 90-minute movie.
The franchise continues to bring very funny actors together in safe, family-friendly fun that will please an eager audience, but this chapter offers little new to the namesake. If anything, it’s all too familiar.
Maxime is yet another gimmicky villain, performed in Ferrell’s awful French accent. Like the villains Gru battled before him, Maxime is one-note and heavily themed. In his case, it’s his obsession with cockroaches, which he says are a “miracle of evolution.” So he partly becomes one, and that becomes his thing: his physical appearance, his airship, his raygun that turns others to mindless roach-human hybrid servants (which are strangely underused and apparently can be transformed back with no trouble).
Are the loveable minions feeling a bit stale? Turn a handful of them into superheroes with Marvel abilities. Kinda like how the villains transformed into magical Zodiac animals in the prior installment from 2022, “Minions: The Rise of Gru.”
They’ve even added a mischievous baby to the story, and not only does Gru Jr. bear a strong resemblance to Jack-Jack from “Incredibles 2,” but he comes up against a dangerous honey badger, reminiscent of Jack-Jack’s battle with the raccoon in “Incredibles 2.” At least they didn’t give Gru Jr. superpowers.
We’ve tasted all of this before, only with slightly different ingredients.
There’s also the franchise’s affinity for ‘80s music. In “Despicable Me 3,” Gru has a dance fight with the villain that concludes with “Money For Nothing.” In “Despicable Me 4,” it’s more of a sing-off against the villain to “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” Both songs were released in 1985.
There are a few deep-cut gags for the parents, like playing “Terminator 2” music while a victim of a butchered haircut chases Gru’s wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig) through the grocery store.
But for the most part, the movie is like throwing comedic spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.
For me, what sticks is the storyline where Gru is blackmailed by a stereotypical teenage neighbor named Poppy, threatening to bust his cover unless he mentors her in completing a heist. But like everything else in the movie, that arc is a blip, with the story quickly moving on.
That’s the pattern — don’t spend too much time focusing on anyone or anything, just move on to the next joke, hoping something lands.
While focus and originality may be scarce, “Despicable Me 4” offers enough humor that, while not groundbreaking, keeps the franchise’s spirit alive.
3/5
Scott McDaniel is an assistant professor of journalism at Franklin College. He lives in Bargersville with his wife and three kids.
