I Watch Films: Despicable Me 4

 

Despicable Me 4

Gru, once a villain, now an agent in the Anti-Villain League, goes to a school reunion. His rival Maxime Le Mal, who holds a grudge from the talent show when Gru did Boy George singing Karma Chameleon, which Le Mal planned to do, wins the prize. He reveals he has cockroach powers; Gru and the AVL arrest him.

Gru returns home to his wife (see Despicable Me 2), three adopted daughters (see Despicable Me), newborn son (new to this film) and uncountable yellow Minions (see all the Despicable Me films and the Minions spin-off films, also all the children who have Minion toys and say “banana”). Le Mal escapes with the help of his girlfriend and swears revenge, blasting off in a cockroach-themed airship. Gru and family and three named minions move to a new town and take new names, a witness protection type scheme. The rest of the minions are taken to AVL headquarters where they cause chaos, and five are given superpowers.

Two minor story lines are Le Mal travelling across America trying to find Gru to take his revenge (by cockroach-ing his son Gru Jr) and the Mega Minion superheroes trying to fight crime and going wrong. The main one is the family trying to fit in to the new town and life. The best part is the safe house which is set up as an impersonal AVL office, one of the minions gets trapped inside a vending machine, which they manage to get quite a lot of mileage and jokes out of.

The daughter of the next door neighbour is a would-be villain who recognises Gru and recruits him. She wants to go to the villain school Gru went to and thinks the best way is to kidnap the school’s honey badger mascot to prove she has real villain potential. They succeed in their farcical heist but unfortunately the honey badger’s collar has a tracking device so the principal informs Le Mal of Gru and family’s whereabouts for a cockroach-themed final showdown.

It's a children’s comedy cartoon about super-villains! And there are some good jokes. If, perhaps, the Mega Minions being doomed to fail, or the excruciating failure of the family to fit in, run down some predictable tracks, being a cartoon allows it to get zany with it. Are there maybe too many characters, leading to some not being given anything to do? The two youngest daughters go together to the martial arts dojo for their not-fitting in scene. On the other hand the heart of all these films are Gru getting out of his depth and the minions doing minion-things so at least the film has it’s focus where it needs to be.

Watch This: Children’s comedy cartoon adventure about supervillainy
Don’t Watch This: Children’s comedy cartoon adventure about supervillainy