Should a review of a âDespicable Meâ movie be a thoughtful analysis or just a list of the funny stuff the Minions do in it? As much as I might believe in the value of film criticism, I kind of suspect that even the finest points of assessment would be dismantled about as fast as a Minion can says âBello!â
Since they first emerged in the original âDespicable Meâ in 2010, the Minions have marauded through movie theaters with impunity, soaking up some $4.6 billion in ticket sales and spawning a franchise that with its latest entry, âDespicable Me 4,” and counting the multiplying âMinionsâ spinoffs, numbers six movies and counting.
Along the way, theyâve accumulated bits of vocabulary from around the globe to add to their gibberish squeals. In âDespicable Me 4,â I heard âantipasti,â âbazookaâ and something that sounded a little like the old âGooniesâ line: âHey you guys!â
So the Minions continue to evolve even if the movies donât. Six films in and with more on the way, too much of a good thing is becoming more of a pressing question in âDespicable Me 4,â a silly and breezy installment from Illumination Entertainment that passes by with about as much to remember it as a Saturday morning cartoon.
Thatâs not all bad. Much of what makes the âDespicable Meâ movies fun is that they avoid any sense of seriousness like the plague. They stand proudly in the Looney Tunes realm of animation, with little aim beyond loosely stitching slapstick sequences together. Thereâs a good chance you might cry during a Pixar movie, but if you wept during a âDespicable Meâ movie, someone might call for help.
For âDespicable Me 4,â which opens in theaters July 3, the filmmakers have, as if unsure about where to go next, smashed four or five sequel plotlines together. The film starts with a school reunion â the Lycée Pas Bon School of Villainy Class of â85 â where Gru encounters an old rival, Maxime le Mal (Will Ferrell), a French-accented cockroach-obsessed villain.
Gru is attending, though, as an agent for the Anti-Villain League. (One hopes there is somewhere an Antihero League led by Travis Bickle and Walter White.) Gru traps Maxime and arrests him, but in short order, Maxime breaks out of prison and vows revenge on Gru, sending their family â wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig), and their three adopted children, Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Madison Polan) â into witness protection.
This gives the movie a few jokes about Gru, who may be a family man now but who still has the bearing of a supervillain, trying to blend in. He tries to impress their next-door neighbor, a snobbish country club member named Perry Prescott (Stephen Colbert). But thereâs also a new character at home: baby Gru Jr.
That allows for some decent gags â the Minions, dressed like a race car pit team, help change dirty diapers with t-shirt gun â but overly familiar ones. Gru Jr. is crawling in the footsteps of another child born into an atypical family with a big-torso’ed, spindly-legged father: Jack-Jack of âThe Incredibles 2.â
That may be why âDespicable Me 4â also quickly moves on from this narrative, shifting for a time into a heist movie. Gru is blackmailed by the Prescott daughter Poppy (Joey King) into stealing a honey badger from his old school. Meanwhile, the Minions, back at AVL headquarters, are used as guinea pigs for a new serum. Five of them are turned into the Mega Minions, a Fantastic Four-like assemblage of Minion-ized superheroes that have powers (flight, elasticity, a ray-gun eyeball) that theyâre predictably useless at controlling. One boulder-shaped Minion is keen enough to swallow a bomb before it detonates but not to prevent his belch from causing just as much damage.
So, yes, it will take a lot more than a so-so sixth film to slow down the Minions. Though thereâs little that distinguishes this latest, overstuffed âDespicable Me,â series veteran director Chris Renaud (with co-director Patrick Delage and writers Mike White and Ken Daurio) are in something between cruise control and autopilot on this careening, carefree sequel.
The âDespicable Meâ movies have always benefitted from the somewhat judiciously meting out their Minions. Even if they very handily upstage the franchiseâs main characters, theyâre second-banana henchmen who patiently wait for their many cameos. In âDespicable Me 4,â one gets trapped in a vending machine and nonchalantly spends the rest of the movie there. If thatâs not a show of force, what is?
âDespicable Me 4,” a Universal Pictures release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for action and rude humor. Running time: 95 minutes. Two stars out of four.
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