Despicable Me 4
Fans of the Minions machine should not be disappointed as the sixth chapter in the franchise delivers in spades. If you like that sort of thing.
Truly despicable: Gru Jr, Gru Snr and Polly Prescott
Image courtesy of Illumination and Universal Pictures.
You either love them or you hate them. But then some people love mosquitoes (there are open-minded entomologists). Audiences attuned to the relentless and mischievous mayhem of this particular universe should get what they deserve – yes, Despicable Me 4 is a nonstop barrage of idiocy. Respected critics have professed an unconscionable liking for the giggling yellow pellets, adding validity to a cultural phenomenon that has pocketed more than $4.6 billion worldwide. So Universal Pictures and Illumination must be doing something right.
Chris Renaud’s Despicable Me 4 takes the grotesque family man and former arch villain Felonious Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) to his school reunion, where old grudges are inflamed. But Gru has an ace up his sleeve: having switched from the dark side, he is now a paid-up member of the AVL (Anti-Villain League). So, just as his school-time nemesis Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell) reveals his new persona as Cockroach Man – along with his dastardly plans – the men from the League move in and apprehend him. However, it doesn’t take Maxime long to break out of maximum security, necessitating Gru and his family to be placed into witness protection, along with a set of new identities.
Gru and his wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig) put on a bright face for the sake of the children, but their new home in the suburban backwater of Mayflower is not the idyll it at first appears. Meanwhile, five of the Minions (Dave, Mel, Gus, Tim and Jerry) are ‘volunteered’ for a clandestine trial and are transformed into tittering versions of the Avengers…
So desperate is Illumination not to breach the attention span of its young audience that it pushes the pedal to the metal and unleashes a frenetic stream of visual gags, action set pieces and a range of obnoxious new characters. Raising the bar of its mandatory ‘rude humour,’ the film now treats us to the actual sight of animated urine and faeces (“Oh, Lucky, I said sit!”, Agnes scolds her pet goat), while the cartoon violence seems even more brutal and apocalyptic this time round.
As we know from Inside Out, the move to a new town and a different school can be traumatic for the young, but Gru’s brood are treated to even greater horrors as their baby brother (Gru Jr) becomes the prey in Maxime’s hideous scheme. It may just be a cartoon, but what passes as entertainment for the very young seems to be getting increasingly cruel, scatological and unpleasant. The animation of these films has always favoured unsightly characters, what with their spindly legs and pointed noses, and the relentless pace should come with a government health warning. It’s all quite exhausting. Children are unlikely to get the various allusions to such movies as Men in Black and Mission: Impossible, so will have to be content with the raw mania of it all. Not that there isn’t any comic ingenuity: when Gru and his new next-door-neighbour Poppy (Joey King) break into his old school to steal a honey badger (don’t ask), Gru is able to do so with just the contents of his baby’s holdall (it’s amazing what you can do with a giant diaper pin and some talcum powder). One tries to end on a positive note.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Voices of Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Pierre Coffin, Joey King, Miranda Cosgrove, Steve Coogan, Sofía Vergara, Stephen Colbert, Chris Renaud, Madison Polan, Dana Gaier, Chloe Fineman, Will Ferrell, Willow Geer.
Dir Chris Renaud, Pro Chris Meledandri and Brett Hoffman, Screenplay Mike White and Ken Daurio, Ed Tiffany Hillkurtz, Music Heitor Pereira, Sound Jeremy Bowker.
Universal Pictures/Illumination-Universal Pictures.
95 mins. USA. 2024. US Rel: 3 July 2024. UK Rel: 12 July 2024. Cert. U.
