Despicable Me 4 Review: A Tired Franchise Crams Too Much Story, Forgets The Jokes [Annecy]

It's been almost 15 years since "Despicable Me" burst onto the scene, heralding the arrival of a new powerhouse in American animation, a new money-printing machine, and the most popular animated characters in decades — the Minions. 

Now, after several spin-offs, we're back to the main series, absent for seven years. And yet, in that time, not much has changed. Felonius Gru (Steve Carell) is still a reformed villain with zero temptation to return to his evil ways. He is still very much in love with his family — wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig), and adopted daughters Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (newcomer Madison Polan) — and doesn't seem to be doing anything with his army of hench-minions. The only new thing in this movie and Gru's world is the addition of a new child. Gru Jr. looks like a mini-Gru, but with slightly more hair. The addition of a child is enough plot for a movie, and how this changes the family dynamic an interesting enough way of kickstarting the second trilogy in the franchise.

Except, nothing is enough for the money-hungry Minions. Instead, "Despicable Me 4" crams in so much story, along with so many different subplots and characters, you'd think you're watching a 10-episode anthology series. Unsurprisingly, each and every one of these gets abandoned pretty quickly in favor of the next new thing. Whatever goodwill "Migration" may have earned Illumination as being capable of experimenting with strong visuals or story is squandered here. The overstuffed "Despicable Me 4" abandons any pretense of caring about characters or narrative, choosing instead to fit in as many gags, characters, and little stories with as little consequences as they can. Judging by the thunderous response at the film's premiere at the Annecy Animation Film Festival, audiences will laugh this movie to box office gold.

The thing about the "Despicable Me" movies is that, for how giant the Minions have become in popular culture, the first movie had some genuine moments of emotion in there, along with some great gags and characters. "Despicable Me 4" seems to rely on the audience doing the character work for them instead of the script (which was written by Ken Daurio and Mike White). None of the characters have changed since the first film, nor has anyone aged. This makes the film feel like just another episode of a TV show, rather than the start of a brand new trilogy.

Which is a shame, because the characters work, and they get into some situations with a lot of potential. After Gru's encounter with an old nemesis, Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell) and Le Mal's girlfriend, Valentina (Sofía Vergara), forces him and his family to go into witness protection, Margo struggles with not having friends and being bullied at her new school. Meanwhile, Agnes is struggling with leaving her beloved pet goat behind during the move. Does Gru care? Does he help his kids? No, there's no time. Lucy gets a job at a hair salon and accidentally ruins the hair of a rich lady, who then swears revenge. Does she cause them any trouble? No, we have to keep moving. Gru visits his old school, but now he's working for the Anti-Villain League. Does he feel conflicted when seeing his old classmates? We don't know. Gru tries to blend in with the country club crowd while in witness protection, but we barely get one scene out of that comedic premise. Did I mention Gru now has a protege? 

"Despicable Me 4" has enough plot for an entire trilogy of films, yet it abandons nearly every story thread before they can realize their promise.

It doesn't help that the new characters are rather forgettable, with Ferrell's performance being 80% an exaggerated accent, and Vergara's lines (which are few and far between) sounding like what ChatGPT would think her character from "Modern Family" would say — also in an incredibly over-exaggerated accent. Even on the family front, the addition of a young Gru falls flat. The baby's one purpose is to be rather hostile toward his dad. In a time when we have "Bluey," the revolutionary kids' show that has parents not just present but engaged and caring, "Despicable Me 4" is just going back to a time of the tired "stupid dad" trope, with Gru Jr. acting the part of Baby Sinclar (all he's missing is hitting his dad on the head with a pan).

The one aspect where the movie's just-doing-the-same-thing-again schtick works is with the Minions. At this point, you're either on-board with their shenanigans or you hate every single one of those yellow creatures. For "Despicable Me 4," their big new thing is that the AVL experiments on five Minions, turning them into parodies of Marvel characters. You have your stretchy guy, your rocky-looking strong guy, one that can fly, and even one that shoots a laser out of its one eye like Cyclops. It's silly but effective, especially when the film mocks the superhero dominion of cinema with a sequence of the super Minions out on patrol doing superheroics while also being incredibly inept at saving anyone. 

"Despicable Me 4" does have a few gags worth a chuckle, but this is a tired effort from a franchise that doesn't really need to try to appeal to the masses anymore. Creatively, the best part of the movie may just be the novelty popcorn bucket at Universal Studios' theme parks.

/Film Rating: 5 out of 10

"Despicable Me 4" opens in theaters on July 3, 2024.