Despicable Me 4 Review: A Disjointed Mess I Wouldn’t Force On A Minion

In the last 14 years, the Despicable Me movies have been franchise gold for Illumination. It's no wonder we've seen direct sequels alongside the Minions spinoffs/prequels. And yet, all franchises run their course, and Despicable Me 4 seems to be proof that this one has done so, as it has nothing of substance to add.

Despite its name, Despicable Me 4 is actually the sixth film in an ongoing franchise. While it will in all likelihood continue the box office success that the previous installments have seen , that won't be because the film tells a deeply compelling story or is full of hilarious jokes – because it doesn't.

Former supervillain Gru (Steve Carrell) would seem to have it all. He’s a hero to the Anti-Villain League, in which he has successfully captured a former boarding school rival, Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell). However, when Maxime breaks out of prison and promises revenge, Gru and his family, which now includes baby Gru Jr., must go into hiding, taking on new identities and learning to live as “normal” people.

Despicable Me 4 has too many plots and not enough story. 

I’m afraid that in summarizing the plot of Despicable Me 4 I may be giving a wrong impression that the movie is in any way coherent or that it has some sort of linear narrative, as that’s not exactly the case. While the film is less than 90 minutes long when you discount the credits, it still doesn’t have enough story to justify even its minimum runtime. As such, there is not so much a story here there are multiple subplots that occasionally intersect with each other. Most of them are irrelevant to the “main” plot and are not the least bit interesting, but the filmmakers have to keep the characters busy somehow!

If plot one is Gru and his family hiding from a supervillain, plot two is the family trying to live their new lives with assumed names, new jobs, and new schools. Each member of the family gets exactly one scene showing them trying, and failing, to live their new life, and that’s that. 

Plot three deals with a group of everybody’s favorite little yellow Minions gaining superpowers, ostensibly to battle the impending supervillain threat, but such a battle never happens. Instead, it just seems like an excuse to give the Minions new stuff to do so that the real franchise moneymakers won't be left out of the story entirely. 

Plot four deals with Gru’s new neighbors, specifically their daughter Poppy (Joey King), who sees herself as a future supervillain and recognizes Gru as somebody who can help her. This plot at least leads into something that could be called a story. Poppy has something that looks like it could be a character arc if you were to squint. Maybe this could have been a whole and better movie. We'll never know.

The ever-popular Minions feel even more tacked on than usual. 

There were opportunities here. Gru’s oldest daughter (Miranda Cosgrove) is, based on a single scene that is never followed up on, having a difficult time making friends in her new school. Gru’s youngest daughter (Madison Polan) is having trouble adjusting due to having to leave her pet goat behind for… reasons. Gru himself is challenged by his nemesis that he is incapable of being successful alone, always needing the Anti-Villain League to help him. None of these potentially interesting stories are ever dealt with after being mentioned. 

Some of these plots do intersect with others, making them technically necessary to the main plot, but only in the most tangential ways. Each scene is just a setup for a new series of gags that could have made for a series of interesting animated shorts that could have been placed in theaters in front of better movies. 

With so much going on and so little time for any of it to happen, none of it is given the slightest focus or ability to breathe. Instead, it’s just one joke after another. For what it’s worth, the gags are fine. Some of the jokes are funny; the kids in attendance at my advanced screening laughed in all the right places.

But even kids who find some of the antics funny will likely be disappointed. The Despicable Me movies are largely a Minion delivery device at this point, which is fine, but even the Minions get the short end of the stick here. While the diminutive yellow sidekicks are everywhere, they don't do anything. It's hard to imagine that younger audiences who are actually fans will be happy with the lip service the characters get here. They could have been axed entirely and the main thrust of Despicable Me 4 would not change. 

Despicable Me 4 has no reason for being and probably shouldn’t be. 

Casting Will Ferrell as the villain this time around surely seems like a good idea on paper, reuniting him with his Anchorman castmate Steve Carrell, but in practice, he doesn’t work. His particular non-specific accent makes him only slightly easier to understand than the Minions. Sofia Vergara also appears as the supervillain's girlfriend/sidekick, and her job is to mostly look like she doesn't want to be there, making her the most relatable character in the movie. 

All theatrical releases exist to make money, but Despicable Me 4 feels like a film that was given a release date before anybody bothered to come up with a reason to make it. There clearly wasn’t a compelling story to tell here, but rather than just wait until somebody actually had an idea, Illumination moved forward regardless, putting together a collection of the best ideas they had at the time.

Despicable Me 4's lack of quality will have no bearing on the film's box office success. If previous results are any indication, the movie will continue the franchise's overall success, likely setting us up for Minions 3 and Despicable Me 5. Perhaps by the time we get there, somebody will have found a story worth telling with these characters again.