3 out of 5 stars

Like Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024), Despicable Me 4 is another victory lap for a beloved animated series. Gru (Steve Carell) is now a good-guy secret agent, happily married, and everything is going swimmingly for the family. He’s completed his character arc, so there’s nowhere left to grow. So, rather than trying to top their previous efforts, they focus on spending time with the characters. Sure, there’s a new villain in town, but the stakes are relatively low—there’s no stealing the moon, just pilfering a honey badger.

So, on the one hand, Despicable Me 4 isn’t groundbreaking or particularly memorable, but on the other, it’s a fun hangout film that fans will enjoy. In this one, the Minions crack a few jokes, there are kooky supervillains, a fun new character, and the usual silly shenanigans. It’s passable, if a bit rote.

Gru’s latest adventure manages to be both straightforward and utterly scatterbrained. Firstly, Gru defeats his high school arch-nemesis, Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell). Infuriated by this humiliation, the vengeful Le Mal breaks out of prison, forcing Gru’s family into witness protection. But the main plot doesn’t revolve around Gru and company fitting into their posh new neighbourhood, nor is it a classic cat-and-mouse game between Gru and Le Mal. Instead, the central thread bears a striking resemblance to Kung Fu Panda 4: Gru’s snooty neighbours have a teenage daughter, Poppy (Joey King), who’s Gru’s complete opposite. However, he soon finds himself becoming her mentor.

It’s a decent hook, but not quite enough for a full-length film. So, it’s thrown together with a multitude of other plotlines: Gru’s wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig) faces slapstick mishaps at her new hairdressing job, Gru struggles to bond with his new baby, five Minions train to be superheroes, and Margo worries about fitting in at her new school. Sounds like a lot to juggle? There’s also Agnes missing her pet goat, her inability to tell a lie, Maxime Le Mal road-tripping across America, and his lingering high school rivalry with Gru.

Impressively, it manages to tie up these many disparate scenes and threads neatly—with a stand-out climax. However, the rapid-fire switching between plot threads feels tailor-made for children with short attention spans. One moment a Minion is stopping a runaway train like Spider-Man, then another is helping a dangling window washer, then another shoots lasers around a park during a botched cat rescue. At its worst, it’s a clip show—like scrolling through TikTok.

The effect is far more distracting than impactful, and after a glut of these flickering lights and sounds, you tune out. You start to daydream about the meaning of this soon-to-be $5BN franchise. Who wrote this one? The chap who wrote The White Lotus?! Why does the new girl look like Gru? Is this a veiled critique of interpersonal dynamics between the old-money aristocracy and the nouveau riche? It becomes like reading tea leaves—or simply being bored.

One of the problems is that, unlike the other films, Despicable Me 4 has far fewer jokes and a lot more exposition. That’s not to say there aren’t any good jokes—like seeing the retired Minions beekeeping, cheesemaking, and playing video poker in Florida—but it often feels like the writers are just trying to get from point A to B.

Take Ferrell’s villain, for instance. He might be an internationally beloved improviser, but there’s not a single improvised line in the film. He threatens Gru, spouts pronouncements, and struggles to use his card to pay for petrol. He’s easily the least memorable villain in the series, and his schtick is little more than the fact that he has a silly French accent. Poppy and Gru’s Odd Couple storyline even takes over at the first opportunity, as if they know how bland this new villain is.

Yet the film is unwilling to commit to the Gru/Poppy storyline either, and soon shifts focus to the Gru/baby plot for the emotional climax—a skyscraper-cockroach-baby moment that’s absurd even for this series. The movie jumps back and forth between silly scenes in an attempt to distract you from the fact that there’s little happening overall. You can easily imagine the writers adding plotlines at random just to reach the minimum feature length (which it barely achieves).

The general idea seems to be that children won’t notice the phoned-in story—but if you ask them, it’s unlikely to rank among their top three Despicable Me films. That said, if Illumination is planning to make Minions movies until they stop being profitable, this one won’t be their last. Gru and his family remain beloved characters who can still carry the heart of the story, the Minions display their trademark silliness—one screams “suppository!” when he falls out a window—and the ending is such a joyous celebration that you’ll probably forget the rest of the movie’s shortcomings anyway.

USA | 2024 | 95 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

frame rated divider universal

Cast & Crew

director: Chris Renaud.
writers: Mike White & Ken Daurio.
voices: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Pierre Coffin, Joey King, Miranda Cosgrove, Stephen Colbert, Sofia Vergara, Steve Coogan, Chris Renaud, Madison Polan, Dana Gaier, Chloe Fineman & Will Ferrell.