There’s not a lot of life left in the Despicable Me franchise. Gru (voiced by Steve Carrell) has renounced his villainous ways, joined the Anti-Villain League as a spy, adopted his girls, Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Madison Skyy Polan), settled down with Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig), and welcomed baby Gru to the family. It’s picture-perfect suburban bliss with more gadgets than Batman can shake a stick at and a hoard of bouncy yellow Minions (Pierre Coffin) at his beck and call.

What’s left for Gru to do? Live the polo-shirt-wearing dad-bod life, I guess. After the assignment to capture super-villain Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell) at Gru’s class reunion goes south, Gru and crew are put in witness protection, given new identities, and stuck in the middle of country club hell. Next-door neighbor Perry (Stephen Colbert) doesn’t want anything to do with Gru—technically Gru’s secret identity, Chet, who sells solar panels—but Perry’s daughter Poppy (Joey King) almost immediately suspects that Chet isn’t Chet, but criminal mastermind Gru.

Despicable Me 4, written by Ken Daurio and Mike White and directed by Chris Renaud, is kind of like that: A lot of intricate set-up for an abrupt payoff. The whole script moves from one gag to the next with no real connective tissue. While the Grus try to keep up with the Joneses, five of the Minions are selected for a special experiment that turns them into the Fantastic Four, er, Five, to thwart Maxime’s plan to find and destroy Gru.

These Mega-Minions don’t do much other than mess around and cause havoc, which is what Minions do. But here, it seems kind of flat. The whole script feels phoned in—possibly a product of last year’s WGA/SGA work stoppage. Scenes don’t really connect, storylines don’t really follow any structure, and characters are never in any real danger. Everything’s just kind of there.

Not that Despicable Me 4 must be a high-water mark of narrative construction, but a little effort would have gone a long way. There are several jokes that work—Sensei O’Sullivan’s absurd proclamation that he is willing to fight a child—but they are the same jokes that could have been something if pushed a little further. Ditto for the ending, which seems to suggest in a desperate attempt for some sort of weight, that Despicable Me 4 could be closing the book on the franchise. That might just be me trying to read something, anything, into this installment, or it might be another instance where the movie tries to look like something of significance even though it isn’t.

Despicable Me 4 (2024)
Directed by Chris Renaud
Written by Ken Daurio, Mike White
Produced by Brett Hoffman, Christopher Meledandri
Voices by Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Joey King, Will Ferrell, Sofía Vergara, Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Madison Skyy Polan, Pierre Coffin, Steve Coogan, Stephen Colbert, Chloe Fineman, Brad Ableson
Universal Pictures, Rated PG, Running time 95 minutes, Opens July 3, 2014

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