Should a Despicable Me movie review be a thoughtful analysis or just a list of the funny things the Minions do in the movie? While I believe in the value of film criticism, I suspect that even the finest points of evaluation would be dismantled as quickly as a Minion can, says Bello!
Since their first appearance in the original Despicable Me film in 2010, the Minions have been roaming theaters with impunity, raking in some $4.6 billion in ticket revenue and spawning a franchise that, with its latest installment, Despicable Me 4, and counting the growing number of Minions spin-offs, has grown to six films to date.
Along the way, they picked up bits of vocabulary from around the world to enrich their insane cries. In Despicable Me 4, I heard antipasti, a bazooka, and something that sounded a bit like the old Goonies line: Hey guys!
So the Minions continue to evolve even if the movies don't. After six movies and counting, too much of a good thing becomes an increasingly pressing issue in Despicable Me 4, a silly, lighthearted installment from Illumination Entertainment that breezes by with about as much to take away as a Saturday morning cartoon.
It’s not all bad. What makes the Despicable Me movies fun is that they avoid any sense of seriousness like the plague. They stand tall in the Looney Tunes realm of animation, with no purpose other than to stitch together slapstick sequences. Chances are you’ll cry during a Pixar movie, but if you’ve cried during a Despicable Me movie, someone might be calling for help.
For Despicable Me 4, which hits theaters July 3, the filmmakers have, as if unsure of where to go, mixed together four or five plots. The film begins with a reunion of the Lyce Pas Bon School of Villainy Class of '85, where Gru meets an old rival, Maxime le Mal (Will Ferrell), a French-accented villain obsessed with cockroaches.
Gru is present, however, as an agent of the Anti-Villain League. (One hopes there is an Anti-Hero League out there somewhere, led by Travis Bickle and Walter White.) Gru traps Maxim and arrests him, but before long, Maxim escapes from prison and vows revenge on Gru, sending their wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig) and their three adopted children, Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier) and Agnes (Madison Polan) into witness protection.
This gives the film some jokes about Gru, who may have become a family man but still has the air of a supervillain trying to blend in. He's trying to impress their next-door neighbor, a snobby country club member named Perry Prescott (Stephen Colbert). But there's also a new character at home: baby Gru Jr.
This allows for some cool gags: The Minions, dressed as a race car team, help change dirty diapers with a T-shirt gun, but too familiar. Gru Jr. follows in the footsteps of another kid born into an atypical family with a broad-chested, spindly-legged father: Jack-Jack from Incredibles 2.
Perhaps that’s why Despicable Me 4 quickly departs from that narrative, turning for a time into a heist movie. Gru is blackmailed by Prescott’s daughter Poppy (Joey King) into stealing a honey badger from his old school. Meanwhile, the Minions, back at AVL headquarters, are being used as guinea pigs for a new serum. Five of them are transformed into Mega Minions, a collection of Fantastic Four-style Minion-ized superheroes with powers (flight, elasticity, a laser eyeball) that they are, predictably, unable to control.
So yes, it's going to take a lot more than a mediocre sixth film to slow the Minions down. While there's little to distinguish this overstuffed final film from Despicable Me, veteran series director Chris Renaud (along with co-director Patrick Delage and writers Mike White and Ken Daurio) is somewhere between cruise control and autopilot on this dazzling, carefree sequel.
The Despicable Me movies have always benefited from a judicious distribution of Minions. While they easily overshadow the franchise's main characters, they are secondary henchmen who patiently await their many cameos.
Despicable Me 4, produced by Universal Pictures, is rated PG. Running time: 95 minutes. Two stars out of four.