For almost 15 years, Illumination’s “Despicable Me” franchise has graced screens with the misadventures of Steve Carell’s Gru and Pierre Coffin’s subjectively humorous Minions. With three main titles and two Minions prequel spin-off films, Illumination has made billions of dollars off this franchise, and that doesn’t include merchandising. So, whether you love or hate these movies, the truth is that they pull in so much money, which is why over the summer Illumination released their latest addition to the franchise, “Despicable Me 4.” To nobody’s surprise, the movie added over 900 million dollars to the franchise’s riches, however, the movie itself was more mediocre than despicable.
For starters, the movie plays like a typical “Despicable Me” or “Minions” movie with its formulaic comedy and fair share of antics from Gru, his minions, and his family. Except this time, Gru has a baby boy named Gru Jr., who gets him into all sorts of hijinks. Adding to the despicableness, Will Ferrell joins the long-time voice cast as Gru’s new, or rather old enemy from high school, Maxime Le Mal, who is French and has a whole shtick for cockroaches. If that didn’t sound interesting at all, don’t worry, you are correct. The few “interesting” things about Maxime is Ferrell’s poor French accent and how he’s barely in the movie. All he does is blackmail Gru’s family, sends them into hiding, which is the main plot of the movie, and then he comes back for a dull final showdown in the third act after being absent for over half an hour. He plays such a small role in the movie that he ends up being forgotten about.
With that, Gru and his family are now in hiding, living undercover double lives as the secret agent business would call it. However, this plotline sets in motion multiple subplots as it ends up going back and forth between our characters. Gru getting blackmailed, to perform a heist, his wife Lucy, voiced by Kristen Wiig, working at a new job, the girls trying to keep their cover and the new neighbors the family interacts with. This all feels like multiple, random sitcom episodes that don’t add anything to the plot itself. Oh yeah, and the Mega Minions are a thing now. There’s another subplot about the agency that Gru works for and their plans to create Mega Minions. Basically, the Minions are knock-off Avengers, and they were all over the marketing of this movie. However, they too don’t do anything for the plot. They’re created, they do some things, then disappear and then come back for the last few minutes. Such a waste of time. Especially since “Despicable Me 2” did the exact same thing where the villain of that movie, El Macho, captured Minions and turned them all savage and purple. The Minions are Illumination’s big merchandising opportunity, so they got to make money that way, but it doesn’t change the fact that the movie itself is forgettable and, at the end of the day, feels completely arbitrary.
“Despicable Me 4” is yet another entry in Hollywood’s less-than-inspiring sequels that may have some entertainment value but really has no other reason to exist but to make money. At this point, I don’t see anywhere else Illumination can go with these movies. They really need to let the Minions be and start finding new ideas to invest their time and money in. That’s not going to happen anytime soon though since, again, this movie made them a ton of money over the summer, and they already started work on a third Minions spinoff movie for a release date of June 30, 2027.
