Bit by bit, Despicable Me 4 amuses
After the side quests trying in vain to propel the minions from sidekicks to leads, Despicable Me 4 brings back our favourite ex-villain Gru and family for another colourful, anarchic romp that delivers plenty of laugh out loud moments of fun.
When his old school rival escapes from Anti Villain League custody vowing revenge, Gru (Steve Carrell) and his family – now including baby Gru Jr – are hastily placed into witness protection until the threat is dealt with. While Gru, Lucy (Kristen Wiig), Gru Jr and the Gorls struggle to adapt to their new suburban identities, the Minions are reassigned to work directly for the Anti-Villain League.
While there’s plenty of fun – and more genuine laughs than the previous movies’ eighties nostalgia-fuelled hi-jinks – there’s never really a point where the film feels like a cohesive story. Rather it feels very much like a series of shorts strung together by a tenuous and underdeveloped plot. The narrative scatters, bouncing from Gru’s awkward assimilation into suburban life, to a heist at his villainy alma mater, and the bumbling yet lovable Minions experimenting with superhero tropes as the not-as-funny-as-you-want-them-to-be Mega Minions.
The film’s animation remains a feast for the eyes, a kaleidoscope of meticulous detail and sly humour but the shenanigans occasionally feel tired, especially in the rote comedy of Lucy’s disastrous stint in a hairdresser, or Dru’s trip to the tennis club with neighbour Perry Prescott (Stephen Colbert, rehashing his President Hathaway schtick from Monsters vs Aliens). The Minions are as reliably daft as ever and while their superhero schtick amuses, it feels – for want of a better word – underpowered. Mostly, though, each sequence entertains in its own right but when they’re joined together they’re noticeably less than the sum of their parts.
Maxime Le Mal is a particularly weak villain, voiced with an outrageous faux-French accent by Will Ferrell in what must be a humiliating final capitulation that Despicable Me has crushed Megamind once and for all (especially after he passed on the execrable Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate) while his sidekick Valentina (Sofia Vergara) is little more than an accented accessory. Subplots involving wannabe villains and school application-enhancing heists are fun, but again add to the disjointedly episodic feel.
Ironically, its in its final moments that Despicable Me 4 fumbles the most, with the various plotlines converging for a final showdown, the actual showdown is decidedly underwhelming and quickly resolved, wasting the potential of the Mega Minions to sustain a longer comedy battle. There’s also a resolution to the family’s fight with Dru’s old headmistress that’s just completely skipped over to make room for a musical finale which – in a sign that this might be intended to be the final movie although I don’t believe that for a second – sees villains from all the previous movies come together for a prison concert karaoke singalong to “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”. There’s even a last-second appearance by Doctor Nefario, voiced by Romesh Ranganathan as original vocalist Russell Brand is…let’s say unavailable.
Fun and funny in equal measure, this cartoon collection of misadventures shows that there’s more than enough life left in these characters to sustain further adventures but if they’re to be of feature length, more effort’s going to need to made in coming up with a story worthy of them.
