The Gunn’s “Despicable Me 4 Review”.
We’ve witnessed Gru go from exploiting children for villainous deeds, to becoming a loving father. We’ve watched Gru do his best raising three girls as a solo father, to marrying and bringing beloved mother, Lucy, into the equation. We’ve followed Gru reunite with his long-lost, crime-loving brother, and yet prioritize the role of father over villainy. We’ve even gone back in time to learn of Gru’s origins becoming a super villain. However, this movie falls flat in keeping up with the others, as we are instead given a “sub-plot cake”, where useless subplot upon useless subplot are stacked on top of each other, hoping to keep young viewers engaged, where everybody else just feels their watching Despicable Me in a “TikTok” form, where a new scene appears every 30 seconds.
Story Summary:
We open with Gru, still being voiced by legendary “Steve Carell” drifting up a mountain in his sports car as he arrives at a national villainy committee, where he reunites with “Maxime Le Mal”, who he’s had beef with since middle school. Maxime however is rewarded “best villain” at the event, however the celebration is short lived as Gru calls in secret agents as they all arrest him, revealing Gru is now working as a spy.
Gru returns home to Lucy, “the gorls”, and baby boy “Gru Jr”, but however is soon interrupted by Mr. Ramsbottom, who reveals that Maxime is on the hunt for Gru and his family, and so, the agency is now sending the family under witness protection to a town far away, all with new identities, where they won’t be found.
From here we find the family involved in a strange amount of shenanigans and subplots, including Gru dropping Margo off at school, Margo and Agnes attending karate class, and Lucy becoming a hair salonist. One side-plot that does amount to something however is when Gru is blackmailed into helping neighboring girl, Poppy Prescott, steal an expensive fuzzy creature in the villain mansion. They succeed in their mission and Poppy becomes an ally; however, friends are not made on the tennis court the next day when Gru is dragged into a game of tennis at the clubhouse. However as the game ends, they soon encounter Maxime as he steals Gru Jr, leading to Gru and Maxime’s battle, as Gru Jr sides with Gru and they defeat Maxime, in turn saving the day and letting them return to their normal lives.
The Review:
Cons:
Alright, let me just spit it out; this film does very little for the Despicable Me franchise. To restate myself, this film felt like a tasteless “subplot cake”, where useless subplot was stacked on top of another subplot, where in turn we were left with watching mindless scenes that were made for boring attempts at entertainment, and not in hopes of telling an actual story, unlike what Despicable Me 1 & 2 were so good at accomplishing. However, if this series was looking to transform into movies full of slice-of-life activities, it might grow on me, but that would be much more suited for a series, not a full-length, dragged-out film.
“Maxime Le Mal” takes the trophy as the series worst villain yet, with zero build-up or emotional weight to his character, making for an extremely boring shoe-in of an “antagonist”, who accomplishes nothing menacing or worthwhile. At the end, he doesn’t even have to fight to get his hands on Gru Jr to make Gru mad, but the plot simply puts him in his hands. He puts up very little of a fight, and would 100 percent get bodied by every other villain in the series. Even when we do learn he and Gru have some chemistry together as they sing in the jail at the end, it’s far too late for us to care, where the writers should have introduced chemistry between the two of them far earlier.
I felt somewhat disrespected watching this film as I truly hoped we’d find a satisfying story- or even resolution in this world of characters, however that was certainly not the case. The difference between all the characters at the beginning of the film is nearly no different than the end, showing no major character development or story told. Even at that, there is no moral of the story to keep you thinking as you leave the theater. This film had the same quality as processed McDonalds, where no new tastes were experienced, and even at that, the familiar tastes of “children animation” were far too stale this time around.
Pros:
Pharrell William’s “Double Life” theme song for the film is very catchy, and has become widely popular on TikTok & Instagram. The animation also stands out for its bright and eye-candy colors, reminding me why Nintendo was likely so drawn to having them work on the Mario Movie. And lastly, the ending where we reunited with all the series’ past villains in jail for one big music number was very cute. Seeing Vector, El Macho, Balthazar Bratt, Scarlet Overkill, and the Vicious 6 all on one screen was frankly my favorite part, but of course, this was a simple “pull on ‘em nostalgia heart strings!” to make fans at least leave the theater with a light smile. If the film actually had scenes where all these villains schemed with one another, or at least interacted in dialogues about their past experiences with Gru, that would have been sick.
Also my true major highlight of this film was Lucy. Just Lucy. She is so fun alongside Gru in the second film, and although that same epic chemistry isn’t prevalent here, I honestly just enjoyed any of her scenes. She was a fun character to follow, even if this show was honestly just more slice-of-life.
(If I had a nickel for every time a recent animated film has brought back their iconic villains, only for them to be used poorly, all while being the fourth film, I’d have two nickels… Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice… Looking at you “Kung Fu Panda 4”.)
Overall, I rate the film an unimpressive 4 out of 10.
All positive points are credited to the tennis scene, the villain cameos, and Gru & Lucy being an enjoyable characters. Anddddd yeah that’s all friends, thanks for stopping by Gunn’s Garage!
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-Caleb Gunn, Writer, Actor, Artist, Content Creator, and “Self-Proclaimed” Celebrity.
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