Directed By Chris Renaud and Patrick Delage

Starring – Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Will Ferrell

The Plot – Gru (Carell), Lucy (Wiig), Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Madison Skyy Polan) welcome a new member to the family, Gru Jr., who is intent on tormenting his dad. Gru faces a new nemesis in Maxime Le Mal (Ferrell) and his girlfriend Valentina (Sofia Vergara), and the family is forced to go on the run.

Rated PG for action and rude humor.

Despicable Me 4 | Official Trailer (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

While plenty about this franchise hasn’t aged gracefully, the evolution in animated renderings are still a refreshing assurance to the movie’s integrity, that not only emphasizes all of the madness and mayhem that these colorful characters exert, but also offers a luscious canvas to audiences of all age, to maintain their commitment in focus. As is the case will Illumination Studios, there’s a blossoming exuberance of color that paints this world with an imaginative essence of chaos, in everything from radiant set designs of unorthodox architecture, to boldly expressive character emotions, with each enhancing the urgency and fun factors of the designs with meaningful detail. You can certainly say plenty about this movie, but you can never call it a sloppy or ugly presentation, and it all serves as a breathtaking reminder to the quality that Illumination has conjured towards articulating a signature style that is easy to identify in a single solitary frame, let alone a beautiful feature length journey. In addition to the animation, the soundtrack is also quite lively and infectious with its spirited selections of popular tracks that will have your toes tapping throughout scenes and sequences inebriated with personality. As unfortunately expected, the songs themselves have very little contextual or thematic relevance to the instances they’re feverishly scoring, but they do elicit a care-free cool factor to the characters that is easy to get lost in, with a new track by Pharell Williams opening the film with a song that is lyrically pertaining to Gru. Lastly, this increasingly expansive cast of noteworthy comedic actors and actresses is once again up for the task in utilizing such eccentric tones, especially that of Steve Carell, and series newcomer, Will Ferrell, who each embody a vicious rivalry towards one another that spans decades. Even with a shaky German accent that still sounds to me like he’s impersonating Borat, Carell brandishes no shortage of three-dimensional charisma to his portrayal, with his best moments involving those compassionate and gentle instances with his children, when held in stark contrast to previous scenes where he’s cunning or persistent to get what he wants. Ferrell is an obvious no-brainer to animated renderings, as his raw energy in deliveries begs to be utilized in vocal capacity, and with the addition of a French accent of his own, Will openly embraces the maniacally twisted side of his character’s design, garnering the childlike immaturity that we’ve always appreciated from him, without sacrificing the integrity of her character’s ferocity, which does serve as one of the best villains of the entire six film franchise.

NEGATIVES

Surprisingly, it’s been seven years since the last Despicable Me film, and that time clearly hasn’t been spent towards fleshing out the next iconic installment, as ‘Despicable Me 4’ is easily the rock bottom of a franchise with mostly mediocre-to-good installments between it. Considering the production brings back its original writers in Mike White and Ken Daurio, it’s appalling how disjointed and sloppy their script truly is, often feeling like a series of one-off shorts, instead of one cohesive project, that constantly remained a task to stay invested, despite its 90 minute run time that should smoothly transfer. Most of the problem is definitely in the abundance of subplots that the movie hands out like candy, with each of them fighting for time in the focus and attention of the narrative, but none of them fleshed out with anything that lands justification in the various conjuring’s. The worst of these is definitely the aforementioned rivalry between Gru and Maxime, which after a fiery introduction, goes flat and un-advancing for the entirety of the picture, which had me effortlessly forgetting that it was what the plot ever centered around in the first place. The other subplots like superhero Minions, an adventurously evil neighbor, Gru attempting to fit in with his suburban surroundings, and other Minions running the Anti-Villain headquarters, come and go with about as much relevance to the central premise as flyby birds, and while the intention was obviously to garner throwaway gags to eat away at a run time that the flaccidness of this script truly didn’t deserve, it results in unfocused storytelling that is a chore to stay firmly invested in, with about twenty minutes of actual development between the central premise atop this review, that feels like they had one day with Ferrell, in order to record all of his lines. In addition to the distracted consistency of the interpretation, the film is so tragically unfunny and ineffective in its material that it’s finally starting to feel the weight of its wear across nearly fifteen years of films. To be fair, this has never been my personal kind of franchise, as I feel the Minions speak to the lowest common denominator of audience, who are easily distracted with loud noises and exaggerated reactions, but even in past installments I’ve always gotten a laugh or two out of adult emphasized humor that was cleverly inserted to the material, but here the material feels dominant towards childlike audiences, with about half of the precedented creativity to spare in its abundance of physical sight gags that register one every minute. When you’ve understood that Gru is going to constantly humiliate himself, or the Minions are going to constantly get into trouble, you come to find that the outline of the material involves very slim margins of originality or risk-taking, and as a result one entire side of the audience demographic will find little endearing about it, once the charm from initial introductions wears off. If these aspects don’t alienate you, then the fact that this film is without any of its series-consistent heart or thematic impulses rightfully should, deducing it to a nothing burger of a film that feels more like an obligation than an opportunity. While I never expect thought-provoking commentary in Illumination films, in the same way I do Pixar, this franchise has always elicited deeper meanings towards family values and self-introspection that kids can at least learn from, and here that is all removed to dedicate the film entirely towards comedy. As previously mentioned, the humor is at a franchise-low, so that sentiment comes with consequences, but even if the humor was consistently effective, it would leave the film feeling one-dimensional, especially surrounding a family dynamic that practically begs to have a meaningful message within the clutches of its stacked subplots. Finally, and perhaps most reflective of the thrown-together emphasis that this movie can’t escape from, the film strangely abandons the Dru character that was heavily utilized and set up to be the future antagonist, after the third movie. Not capitalizing on this aspect is fine enough, but to omit him all together from the finished product shows a greater concern for the creative behind this property, as here he’s not even mentioned in passing like most uninspired and lazy sequels will do, but rather he’s not even existent in this world as a whole.

OVERALL
‘Despicable Me 4’ is one banana of a film, in that it constantly trips over various stacked subplots in failing to attain one cohesive vision to its structure. While the film is aided tremendously by energetic performances and beautiful artistic merit in animation, the overwhelming ineffectiveness of its humor, with a complete lack of heartfelt underlining, leaves it feeling too undercooked, even for an Illumination Studios product, insinuating that it might be time to finally say goodbye to this mad scientist and his never-ending legion of idiots, as they’ve clearly become a parody of themselves by this point.

My Grade: 4/10 or D