Despicable Me (2024)

One of the great things about working at a place with a movie theater is I get to watch movies that I don't want to see in the slightest. Tonight it was Despicable Me 4, the unnecessary sequel to the now long-running Despicable Me franchise. A series that was perfectly acceptable having two films as it does with four, evidenced by the fact that the movie doesn't have any new ideas. Supervillain turned hero Gru must take down a new flavor of the month villain with whom he has a past with who is trying to steal something from Gru. There's a stealth scene in a lair that involves an unlikely aggressive animal; and the film concludes with Gru fighting the villain in a giant flying thingy over a city while the minions cause whatever shenanigans to fill up the space the writers didn't want to think about. Sound familiar? Yeah it's basically all the films.

The minions really are the most unbearable part. Just about every scene feels contractually obliged to have some kind of minion appearance because the writers wanted to break the Guinness World Record for most screaming in a film. There's also a completely useless subplot in which some minions become superpowered and it doesn't even pay off in the end, just adding to how much the writers care about your time. In general this film has a problem with giving the characters little skits as busywork that don't amount to anything. Kristen Wiig's character is given basically nothing to do even though she is literally the mother of Gru's child; we're only focused on Gru's perspective and even then there isn't much to his relationship with his son aside from a few minion jokes and an underdeveloped lead villain.

On top of that, the writers weren't creative enough to work with the son premise and they instead shoehorn a new character who Gru also has to serve as a mentor for. She's barely developed and clearly only there to give us the mandatory "heist scene with funny animal" I had previously mentioned. I still can't get over how it's basically the shark scene or the chicken scene from the other films. It would have been way more interesting if this new girl was the main villain of the story instead of the forgettable cockroach guy they wrote; she has both a better reason to be interested in Gru and also has more bearing on the story.

If lack of focus sounds like Despicable Me 4's problem then you have hit the nail on the head. The first film, while not that good, at least had a clear arc for Gru and the other characters. Ever since then it's been downhill, and this film proves that we really didn't need anything new from this series. It makes me disappointed how much sequels have become a given in children's media. Remember when sequels used to be for the bargain bin section of Walmart? In 2024 it's the originals that get carelessly thrown onto streaming platforms and sequels get the rounds in actual theaters. What a strange yet effective method for taking our money and wasting our time. Also this movie ends with the classic "everybody dances" finale, once again dooming a great song to be connected to crap.