★★★
Despicable Me culminated with Silas Ramsbottom. Not the character voiced by Steve Coogan per se, but the sequence of his cheerful introduction. Was it Kevin, or perhaps Bob, who glanced furtively at his stooge neighbor and snickered “deeply,” before bursting into unbridled laughter? Either way, a gag of all-time greatness was born. Nothing else in the franchise, now fourteen years old, has ever matched such infantile brilliance, certainly not in a way that would justify the incredible commercial success the series has achieved. $4.6 billion and counting. Movie four doesn’t do much to break the mold, instead opting for gentle expansion. It’s bright, windy and a little exhausting.
The Ramsbottom gag earns a brief reprise at the beginning Despicable Me 4. That’s when the man himself, in a pleasing example of built-world continuity, comes knocking to take Gru (Steve Carell) and the nukes to a safe house in a criss-crossed suburb. An old nemesis has broken free from his supposedly high-security prison and, for the most brilliant and pathetic of reasons, has the destruction of Gru at the top of his to-do list. That’s exactly where he beefed up his army of diddy cockroaches, identikit, and used a device of his own invention to transform himself into a human cockroach. He’s obviously a bit of a coward. You’ll understand it before you even hear the weird fake French accent Will Ferrell gave him. Anything goes in a world where no one questions Gru’s own mangled pronunciations.
More than before, the echoes of Pixar The Incredibles – and its own sequel – reverberate here. Between power-trip villains, retro future aesthetics, and family dynamics, there’s always been some degree of crossover, but it’s never been more blatant. Gru and his wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig) now have a baby of their own, cutesy brothers to seemingly ageless sisters Margot (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier) and Agnes (Madison Polan). Known primarily as “the Baby”, Gru Jr. is the bro of both Incredible Jack and Gru himself, with whom he shares a lukewarm relationship. As familiar as it is, it’s the father-son journey here that sets the bar higher than the film at large. It’s almost touching.
There is also potential in the film’s witness protection, building on the same play park enjoyed by WandaVision on Disney+. This too would have worked well in serial format. Sure, Gru and his family take a trio of Minions with them, one of whom spends the entire movie stuck in a vending machine, but their family remains endearing. Assigned new identities, Gru becomes a solar panel salesman, Chet Cunningham, with Lucy renamed Blanche and deployed as a hairdresser. A nice thrill of “keeping up with the Joneses” plays out with the neighbors, while the need to not stand out creates obvious tension. It’s enough to fuel the film on its own.
It’s a shame, then, that so much is thrown into the overflowing crucible of the film. While Gru and Lucy’s failures in suburbia are delightful, they’re crowded out by subplots and a slew of new characters. Featuring flying cars, a badger heist, school bullies, the girl next door, tennis shenanigans, a school for naughty kids, a maniacal principal and five genetically enhanced “Mega Minions” who cause mayhem in the city… it’s all just a little too much. .
This does not mean Despicable Me 4 It’s not funny. Rather the opposite. A script by School of Rock’s Ken Daurio and Mike Wright succinctly nails a solid rhythm of gags, while Chris Renaud goes wild, both with his free-form direction and his continued delivery of the Minions’ very unique vocabulary. Much of the film feels like shorts spliced together and interwoven with Minion visual gags. It’s not a recipe for consistency but, like any successful sketch format, it slows the pace.
Another Minions Filming will take place in June 2027 and it’s hard to believe that this is the end of the flagship series. Despicable Me can doesn’t aspire to all-time greatness – bottom gags notwithstanding – but there’s something quite remarkable about the consistency of its efforts. Shrek missed by 3, Madagascar decreased to 4 hours and who knows if Ice Age Is this still an ongoing project for Blue Sky? Despicable Me moves around, earning laughs and dollars, never throwing the ball so high that she risks dropping it. The fourth film is no better or worse than the first and doesn’t seem tired for longevity either. Now they’re bananas.
T.S.