Despicable Me 4, the sixth Minion-centric film that continued the series’ absurdly prolific ROI with a $750 million global box office haul (and counting), It is now available to stream on VOD services like Amazon Prime VideoThis franchise has already pumped $5.2 billion into the coffers of Universal and Illumination, and that’s just the money from ticket sales — you’ve probably seen Minion faces on kumquats and cupcakes and other assorted supermarket effluvia, thanks to an advertising campaign that threatens to blanket the earth every two or three years. In other words, ubiquity is this series’ strength. And while some of us are already sick of this nonsense, the numbers don’t lie, which is why these movies exist. Oh, and to make kids laugh. We can’t forget about the kids.
Despicable Me 4STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: We open with a ruckus at Gru’s (Steve Carell) high school reunion. It’s a high school for supervillains, of course, and it reignites the decades-old rivalry between Gru and Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell), which stems from, OF COURSE, a performance of a Culture Club hit at a talent show. But! Gru, who you surely remember from films past, is a reformed villain these days — he’s going undercover for the Anti-Villain League! He captures Maxime and returns home to his family: wife Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig); their three adopted daughters Edith (Dana Gaier), Agnes (Madison Polan), and Margo (Miranda Cosgrove); baby Gru Jr. (Tara Strong); and countless Minions (all voiced by franchise co-creator Pierre Coffin). There’s a pet goat roaming around, and a group of Minions act as an ever-ready diaper squad for Gru Jr., whipping out a Huggie and tossing it out the window, powdering his bottom, and changing his diaper in a jiffy, all to the frenetic guitar and drum beat of the Van Halen classic. Just Like You Do.
But a problem arises, as it often does. Maxime escapes from prison, prompting the AVL brass to put Gru and the family into a witness protection program. Now, if you’re thinking that a world-famous supervillain who once notoriously stole the Moon might have a hard time fitting into a bland, sunny suburb, well, you’re thinking that later in the story, he’ll get to that, addressing his own ramshackle precarity. But for now, Gru and everyone move into the town of Mayflower and a ramshackle little house, with the Diaper Squad in tow, while the rest of the Minions are sent off to the AVL to presumably, eventually, destroy the place.
All of this sets off a series of hijinks and contradictions that never quite hold up as a plot, even though no one ever intended to make a movie that makes sense: Gru meets the neighbors, preppy snobs Perry (Stephen Colbert) and Patsy (Chloe Fineman) and their teenage daughter Poppy (Joey King), leading to craziness on a country club tennis court. Edith and Agnes square off with an idiotic karate instructor. Lucy nearly burns down the salon on her first day as a hairdresser. Poppy recognizes Gru and blackmails him into helping her pull off a heist. A Minion is trapped in a vending machine throughout the film. Gru struggles to win Gru Jr.’s love. Maxime and his girlfriend Valentina (Sofia Vergara) plot to kidnap Gru Jr. The AVL Minions are subjected to an experiment that turns them into superpowered Megaminions who look suspiciously like a group of Marvel characters. And maybe this will all end with a dance party, but hey, NO SPOILERS, right? Right.
What movies will it remind you of? On multiple levels, and much more so than in previous franchises, DM4 It looks remarkably similar The Incredibleswhich made this kind of parody much more coherent.
Performance value Looking Audience: Of all the celebrities who do stupid accents in these movies, I’ve always enjoyed Carell’s pseudo-Slavic tone, which is fun, whimsical and distinctive.
Memorable dialogue: I know the Minions’ language is mostly Arglebargle, but I’m pretty sure one of them joined a fight while exclaiming, “Suppository!”
Sex and skin: None.
Our opinion: You have to admire the My favorite villains, for always and unfailingly aiming for the joke, the joke, the joke. They leave the sentimental crap for other kids’ movies and the heavy subject matter for Pixar. They’re plot garbage, sometimes overbearing, constantly loud and colorful, and essentially about nothing but the pursuit of laughter. It’s a pure, possibly noble modus operandi. No one is manipulating you into crying into your Jujyfruits or force-feeding you sentiments about the power of friendship or family togetherness. None of that. What we have here—for the sixth time, I must reiterate—are vaguely sentient little yellow balloons chattering and burping, health-care violence, bird poop jokes, big blobs of needles, and cartoonish characters. Some of it falls flat, but if you’re lucky, you find six or eight or twelve things to laugh at. That’s the nature of comedy.
And then DM4 It’s more and more of the same, the same, for better or worse, worse, worse. These movies evade criticism by delighting the 12-and-under demographic for 90 minutes straight, as the laughter of children is UNDENIABLE. Monsters, Inc. We’ve been taught that it’s a clean, renewable, untapped source of energy. What you, old man, think about it is irrelevant.
But that won’t stop me from writing this irrelevant paragraph. I have a job to do, you know? Are Minions annoying? Maybe. (My thought: No, they’re fine. Paw Patrol (But what? That’s annoying.) Maybe if you squint hard enough, you can find some satire here: suburban family life, the struggles of raising kids, the boring comic book movie tropes (one character stands up after watching the Megaminions with the hot line, “I’m sick of superheroes!” which is about as deep as pop culture commentary gets). Does anyone actually care about any of this stuff? The Minions pranking each other? Gru rescuing his baby and eventually earning his admiration? Not really, and that’s the point. My favorite villain/Minions The franchise has stuck to the same formula for 14 years (!) and as long as kids keep laughing and the money keeps rolling in, it will continue. It works pretty well on those two levels, which is no small feat. Remember, there are plenty of movies that work on both levels. zero levels. Zero! That’s really nothing.
Our calling: STREAM IT. Evaporative entertainment has its value.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
