Review: Despicable Me 4
Score: 1.5/4
Illumination’s CG-animated Despicable Me 4 has former-villain-turned-good-guy-secret-agent Gru (voiced by Steve Carrell) going into hiding after an escaped super villain threatens Gru’s family. Gru’s undercover life as a suburban dad (which isn’t all that different from what he had before) is complicated by a threat next door (more on that later) and knowing that he must face his greatest enemy once again.
I took my 8-year-old daughter to see this, and she loved it, declaring it her favorite in the series so far. That’s fine and I love and support her enthusiasm, but when it comes to celebrating this (and other Illumination features and Minions” and The Grinch and Migration), she’s on her own.
Here’s the thing: I understand that these movies are for kids, very young kids in fact, and are enormously popular worldwide. I get that the makers of Despicable Me 4 are leaning into farce and outright cartoonishness in an effort to elicit easy laughs, the kind you’d get from a half-priced birthday party clown with no shame. I am aware of this and what I’m expected to say here: kids will love it, so take the kids! This is just an opinion piece but, if you’ve read this far, then here’s my opinion: you and your kids deserve so much better than this.
This movie, like the three before it and the Minions offshoots, are elaborately animated, frantic and have all the wit of a tightly expanded whoopie cushion. The screenplay is somehow overly busy and incredibly lazy at the same time. The strongest subplot that develops is also the most discomforting: Poppy (voiced by Joey King) is a creepy and cruel 13-year-old who lives next door to Gru and blackmails him into becoming her mentor.
It eventually transpires into something innocent, I guess, as Gru and Poppy wind up becoming a sort of team. Until we get to that point, there’s an ick factor that reminds me of the union between the two main characters of Luc Besson’s Leon: The Professional (1994). Poppy is initially rotten and downright sociopathic towards Gru, informing him that she will expose him online if he doesn’t help her. I realize this is a movie with Minions and flying cars, but why has a character this uncomfortable made its way into Despicable Me 4?
There’s also a barely formed subplot that Poppy is terrorizing Gru’s daughter, but this is never truly resolved or brought up again. Poppy is the character I was the most interested in, even as she reminded me a lot of Alicia Silverstone in The Crush (1993). What’s worse, how Poppy is introduced as a social media monster who gleefully hurts the family next door, or how the film drops all of Poppy’s potential danger by the third act and softens the jagged edge of its most memorable character?
If I were to take this seriously, I’d say that this entry and the ones before it demonstrates a contempt for their characters and even its audience. The writers set up Gru and those around him for mean pratfalls and little else. The original intention of making this 007 fused with The Pink Panther is gone, and it’s not just the fault of the Minions that these and other Illumination movies are, to quote the Minions, “pee-yew!” These movies work as time killers and babysitters. If that’s all you’re looking for here, then fine.
If you want something of substance, then this series, if it was ever any good, peaked years ago. Despicable Me 4 has the sort of try-anything-for-a-laugh, bare minimum of wit that marked the latter sequels to Shrek and Ice Age.
The lack of quality writing, developed characters and true feeling in Despicable Me 4 is likely the point- why deal with a character arch when you can crank up another trendy song on the expensive soundtrack? Who cares about the inner life of anyone on screen when there’s another opportunity for butts to be slapped (this happens a lot in these movies), farts to be ignited and cruel laughter guffawed by critters who look like nightmare Franken-Twinkies.
Speaking of nightmarish, Gru’s initial obstacle is a French adversary named Maxime (voiced by Will Ferrell, who fails to give his character and performance much distinction besides an accent), who turns into a cockroach. Later, Maxime turns bystanders and kids into Cronenbergian cockroaches, though the third act sloppily backtracks on following through on this. There’s also a scene where an old woman in a wheelchair is pulverized, while an infant is abducted and stolen from its father. if any of this were actually funny (instead of the music and broad performances announcing how we’re supposed to be doubling over with laughter), it wouldn’t seem so icky.
There are no characters in these movies, just broad stereotypes and lazy caricatures. It ends with a sing-along to Everybody Wants to Rule the World that is full of franchise cameos and yet, still manages to be the most embarrassing part of the movie.
It’s amusing to see how the voice actors are billed in the opening credits like they have the weight of in-the-flesh movie stars. At this point, Steve Carrell’s Gru is such a tired, business-as-usual figure, who sounds like Bela Lugosi attempting a Russian accent, I suspect any halfway decent mimic could replace him. The same goes for Kristin Wiig, whose hyper-chipper, mega caffeinated uber mom is so one-note, I still don’t know if she’s crazy because of her secret life as an agent or her marriage to a nutjob like Gru. To give the actors some credit, perhaps it’s not their fault that this franchise gives them nothing to do but the bare minimum.
On the other hand, I felt so much from, of all people, Vin Diesel’s take on The Iron Giant (1999), where Diesel had maybe, what, a dozen spoken lines? No one here is doing anything on even that level. Remember how Al Pacino was cast as the villain El Macho in Despicable Me 2, then left, with Benjamin Bratt willing to do a deranged Scarface impression in his absence? That is the level of quality here. Pacino didn’t want to be in Despicable Me 2 and made a valid judgement call.
While it’s mostly an ordeal to watch from top to bottom, Despicable Me 3 had Trey Parker playing Balthazar Bratt, the former child star of an awful 1980’s sitcom, Little Brat, who grows up to be a bitter supervillain who still acts like an 80’s child star. Parker’s performance and the character he played were golden. It was the peak of this series, though the creators clearly think they have something with the Mega Minions who pop up halfway and are presumably being prepped for their own movie.
Illumination remains the anti-Pixar, with a stack of profitable and mostly disposable cartoons. I admittedly liked The Secret Lives of Pets 2 and much of The Super Mario Brothers Movie but only childhood nostalgia (the sort that made me think Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol was a “classic” in 1987) will salvage the legacy of Illumination. I want to like Illumination movies, because they’re so impeccably animated, but I find them as easy to resist as any of the endless The Land Before Time sequels.
I’m giving this a star and a half for Joey King’s initially twisted performance as Poppy and for the bit where a Minion winds up living inside a vending machine. Otherwise, I wish seeing the inevitable Mega Minions and Despicable Me parts 5-17 didn’t feel like an obligation.