Again let us praise the giddy delight that the minions provide. Sure, they have trouble carrying their own films, but as the dada-esque relief, particularly of a middling film, they are a tonic for the soul that gives us the strength to hang on until the final credits, where they provide some of the best entertainment to be found in DESPICABLE ME 4. These excitable little tater tots may find themselves in a film that proves the franchise needs a reboot, or retirement, but when they swagger across the screen, there is a whiff of the old magic. A tiny whiff.
This installment finds Gru (Steve Carrell) now happily married to Lucy (Kristen Wiig) and settled into the classic domesticity of your 60s sitcom with their three adopted daughters, Edith (Dana Gaier), Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), and Agnes (Madison Skyy Polan), plus Gru, Jr. a baby with a new kind of daddy issues. Alas, an old grudge is about to rear its ugly head in the form of Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell), sending Gru and his family into a safe house and witness protection provided by his employers, AVL (Anti-Villain League), in the affluent suburban town of Mayflower.
Don’t get your hopes up. No opportunity to righteously skewer the ‘burbs is forthcoming, though the newly monikered Cunninghams do find themselves living next door to a classic narcissist (Stephen Colbert) and his air-headedly oblivious wife (Chloe Fineman). Instead, we are subjected to an hour and twenty-four minutes of derivative storylines from the less than classic of those ci-mentioned sit-coms. Which is why Lucy, now Blanche, is set to work as a hair stylist, despite no training in the field, and with predictable results. Does the woman (Laraine Newman) she em-baldens become her arch nemesis as a diverting sub-plot? Not really. Do the kids, fretting about leaving behind their friends, have adventures and mishaps fitting in at a new school. Nope.
The plot is a series of non-sequiturs on two tracks. One involving a would-be villain in the form of Poppy (Joey King) the boomer-despising kid next door who is blackmailing Gru into helping her achieve her girlish dreams of super villainy after discovering his identity. The other involving Gru’s surplus minions (he keeps only three) being sent to AVL headquarters where Director Ramsbottom (Steve Coogan) uses them for medical experiments. That latter involves what could have, and should have, been a swipe at super-hero movies when the experiment turns them into Mega Minions. Certainly, the superhero idioms evoke the Fantastic 4, X-Men, and for some reason, the Coneheads. Their minion-esque attempts to fight crime are as novel as the other recycled jokes spewed at us. Not even an object lesson in Newton’s Third Law of Motion ameliorates the situation.
So where did the creative effort go in DESPICABLE ME 4? Well, it is a surprisingly energetic film considering the actual fun component is so lacking. Characters are always rushing around in dithering panics, from a grocery store escape to a heist at Gru’s alma mater, Lycée Non Bon where his caper involving a honey badger named Lenny sends the wrong message about that species. As for trying to make cockroaches the new minions, the less said on that score the better. Instead of exhilaration, there is an irritated fatigue about contrived situations and a stupendous lack of wit, or even originality. Plus, one of the signs in the background of a chase sequence has an incorrectly placed possessive apostrophe. There’s time to notice such things as we while away the time waiting for the minions to reappear.
DESPICABLE ME 4 should never have happened. It is a waste of Carrell’s ability to be foolish and endearing at the same time. But since it has, all we can do is derive what joy we can from those tater tots as we white-knuckle our way through the anticipation of what comes next in the continuing devolution of a once great concept.
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