Despicable Me 4 (2024) Review: Familiar But Fun and Zippy Enough For a 90-Minute Family-Friendly Entertainment
Ah, yes… It’s Gru and his mischievous yellow Minions back in action, marking their fourth (or sixth, if you include the two spin-off films) outings since Despicable Me in 2010. The last two — 2017’s Despicable Me 3 and 2022’s Minions: The Rise of Gru — were underwhelming bunches, even though both movies made bank at the worldwide box office.
Here’s the thing about Despicable Me/Minions movies, this is the kind of review-proof franchise that no matter how you slice them, people going to show up in droves, especially given its enduring brand longevity. So, Despicable Me 4 will highly likely continue its winning streak at the box office. Personally, I have no expectations with the fourth entry. The trailers so far look like they throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, making me wonder if this is going to be yet another disappointment.
While Despicable Me 4 does suffer from the usual hit-and-miss jokes, the movie turns out to be better than I expected. It’s uproariously fun and energetic that the movie’s 94-minute length just whizzes by, thanks to its overall efficient direction. The latter marks the return of franchise veteran Chris Renaud, who previously co-directed the first two Despicable Me. It’s nice to have him back on board and this time, he directed alongside first-time feature filmmaker Patrick Delage, previously an animation director for the Sing movies and The Secret Life of Pets 2.
In Despicable Me 4, Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) welcomes his baby son, Gru Jr. as a new member of his family. Life’s been good for the former supervillain-turned-AVL (Anti-Villain League) agent with his wife, Lucy (Kristen Wiig) and their stepchildren — Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier) and Agnes (Madison Polan). But Gru’s latest arch nemesis, Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell) has escaped the maximum security prison after Gru arrested him during his alma mater at the mountainous castle of Lycée Pas Bon. Maxime seeks vengeance that he’s going to get him and his family, prompting the reinstated AVL director Silas Ramsbottom (Steve Coogan) to set them up for a witness protection programme.
The majority of the Minions are subsequently relocated to the AVL headquarters, leaving only the three — Ralph, Ron and Gus — to tag along with Gru and his family. They are even given new identities such as Gru becomes Chet Cunningham who sells solar panels while his wife is now Blanche the hairdresser. Despicable Me 4 also introduces other new characters including the Prescotts (Stephen Colbert’s Perry and Chloe Fineman’s Patsy) and their sneaky daughter, Poppy (Joey King).
Continuity doesn’t seem to bother co-directors Chris Renaud and Patrick Delage since the fourth movie is noticeably missing the one character from Despicable Me 3: There’s no sign of Gru’s twin brother, Dru. The last time we saw him, he embraced his villainy and I figure the next movie is going to be Gru vs Dru.
And yet, the missing Dru doesn’t prevent me from enjoying Despicable Me 4 for most of the movie. The introduction of Maxime Le Mal, a flamboyant supervillain with the mutated power of a cockroach hybrid leaves Will Ferrell enough room to flex his gleefully over-the-top antagonist role, complete with an exaggerated French accent. He and Steve Carell play off each other well, where the latter slips on his iconic role effortlessly. The rest of the recurring characters have their moments, notably Edith/Blair and Agnes/Britney dealing with a stern karate teacher (Brad Ableson) and Lucy encounters an angry customer in the supermarket in a Terminator 2-like parody scene with Brad Fiedel’s iconic score playing in the background.
Renaud and Delage pile their movie with one set piece after another at a zippy pace, all held together by a series of vignette-style narrations. It somehow works well in their favour. The movie packs the right, anything-goes madcap comedy vibe that incorporates everything from the sitcom variety (Gru and his family’s new identities in their witness protection programme) to a heist movie (Poppy has been eager to steal the honey badger from Gru’s old school with his help) and a superhero send-up (the introduction of Avengers/Fantastic Four/X-Men-like Mega Minions with the five selected Minions are given different powers through super-serum injections).
Like Despicable Me 3, the movie is filled with ’80s needle drops of the yesteryear from Culture Club to Tears for Fears. The animation pops with vibrant colours as usual. Back to the heist-movie angle, the whole sequence has June Squibb stealing the show each time she’s in as the determined wheelchair-bound Principal Übelschlecht.
