REVIEW: ‘Despicable Me 4’ Is Neither Bad Nor Super

Universal Studios and Illumination return to Gru (Steve Carell) and the minions once again in Despicable Me 4. The movie is decent. It’s better than the two previous sequels but a bit lesser than either Minions movie and far from the quality of the original from 2010. Despicable Me 4 is bloated with too many plots, but it’s still good for some laughs and a nice family message by the end.

Gru and Lucy (Kristen Wiig) are fully into the spy business at this point. But after capturing Gru’s high school rival and supervillain Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell) at a class reunion, Maxime quickly escapes and vows revenge. Gru and the family, which now suddenly includes a baby, Gru Jr., have to go into hiding in a posh town far away to keep everybody safe from Maxime. By the way, Maxime turned himself into a human cockroach.

The move isn’t just emotionally taxing on Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Madison Skyy Polan). It’s also a bit taxing on the viewer as the movie splinters into at least six different ongoing plots. There’s the overall hiding from Maxime. There’s Margo’s worry that she’ll struggle to make new friends. Edith and Agnes are taking karate lessons from a guy (Brad Ableson) who maybe takes it too seriously. Lucy is pretending to be a hair stylist and failing completely. Gru is tangled with the neighbors, especially their daughter Poppy (Joey King) who blackmails him into helping her with a heist. There’s the minions who move with Gru and the crew. And of course, there’s all the other minions who become part of a secret agency. Five of them are given superpowers and become Mega Minions.

There’s a lot going on. Too much. The movie is only 90 minutes long and many of the scenes feel like they’re cut a little short so that the next vignette can take place. There’s nothing wrong with any of the plots, but some only last a scene or two. Sometimes you’ll wish there was more to a plotline because it’s never brought up again. Sometimes you’ll wish Despicable Me 4 just skipped them give more time elsewhere. And sometimes the movie nails just how much of a plot you get. But just about every time, the scenes are worth it for a laugh.

The most disappointing part of Despicable Me 4 is that Margo, Edith, and Agnes get relegated to total side characters again. Margo and Edith are especially scant. Agnes gets a good few of her signature adorable, animal-loving lines and they work like a charm. But the power of the original Despicable Me was the relationship between Gru and his adopted daughters. Despicable Me 4 opts to completely sideline them in favor of a new character, Poppy.

Poppy plays a very similar role to Dru in Despicable Me 3. She forces Gru back into the bad-guy life through blackmail. Only, Poppy doesn’t have the appeal of being Gru’s long-long, handsome twin. She’s the next-door neighbor’s teenage daughter. Why is Gru out here making friends with a teenager? No matter how hard I try not to overthink it, it’s just an uncomfortable plotline. There’s no reason why a similar version of the same plot couldn’t have been built around Margo, or even Edith. Gru is the best version of his character when he’s caring about his family. It doesn’t work the same when the young girl in question is just a random kid.

The new family member works though. While Gru Jr. comes completely out of the blue early in the movie, it’s a 90-minute movie—you can get over it. The bit about the baby hating his father and going out of his way to torture him is pretty funny throughout. Intellectualizing a baby isn’t my favorite comedic device in the world, but it suffices. The emotional payoff by the end does satisfy.

The vast number of cameos from characters throughout the franchise is only a reminder of how much better the characters and their relationships were in previous movies. Still, this entry is more memorable than Despicable Me 2 and has fewer (but not none) tasteless jokes about prison than Despicable Me 3. The soundtrack is also less impressive than you expect from children’s animation recently. There are no needle drops, only Gru singing ‘80s hits and a potential mediocre Drake diss track by Pharrell to open the movie.

Quite unsatisfactory is the fact that Despicable Me 4 is a full-on superhero movie. It’s not just because a bunch of minions get superpowers. The cinematography is superhero movie-like in the way it swings around through action scenes (to the point where it gets blurry on a big screen). And the number of overlapping, unrelated plots that eventually meet up for a big finale feels like every superhero team-up movie of the last 20 years. There’s a random person on the streets who decries how they’re sick of superheroes. It’s unfortunately ironic to try and make this meta joke about audiences’ waning interest in superheroes while making exactly the kind of movie it’s trying to poke fun at.

Ultimately, Despicable Me 4 is too stuffed with characters and plots to reach the same level of satisfaction as the original, but it’s packed with enough good jokes and relationships that land that it can float by as a decent family flick.

Despicable Me 4 is in theaters July 3rd.