Despicable Me 4 Review – Gru Goes Under Guard to Preserve the Minions’ Magic | Movies

Here’s a new addition to the run-of-the-mill supervillain saga, featuring the animated, clumsy giant villain Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), with his comical bald head, sharp screams, and foreign accent. We’re now at the fourth film in the series; sixth, if you count the two spin-off films about his talkative yellow sidekicks.

This Illumination Entertainment franchise has never been as inspired as rival Pixar’s best works, despite its obvious borrowing from Pixar’s Incredibles Syndrome. The influence of this powerful film seems even more evident today, as Gru and his family must be moved to a new town and their slightly exasperated handlers assign them new witness protection-style identities. But it must be said that the Despicable Me franchise has marathon endurance; it relaxes into its long-established characterization and storytelling and only a snob could deny this film’s unpretentious consistency in providing family entertainment. And this is, after all, the franchise that gave us the catchy film Happy from Pharrell Williams, who returns to write songs for DM4.

The latest crisis in Gru’s life begins with his arrival at a high school reunion at his supervillain alma mater somewhere in French-speaking Europe; it’s LPB, or Lycée Pas Bon, a castle in the mountains, where the class of ’85 has gathered. Gru, long since converted to working for the powers of light, faces a new enemy: former classmate and implacable nemesis Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell). Maxime has a weapon that turns all mammals into cockroaches – even humans – and when he goes out of his way to attack Gru and his wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig), his stepchildren and their baby, the entire family must be relocated to a new town with fake names. And it’s in this new suburban monotony that Gru is disconcerted to meet the kid next door: Poppy (Joey King) who has a proposition for him. Meanwhile, Silas Ramsbottom (Steve Coogan), the pompous British Q-type of the Anti-Villain League, has developed new biotechnology to evolve the little yellow minions to a new level of crime-fighting excellence.

In truth, the minions are still the least funny and most boring part of the Despicable Me movies, but it must also be said that they are undoubtedly an important and mysterious part of the franchise’s alchemy of success and brand identity, providing wacky nonverbal fun, reaching out to very young children and fostering success in non-English speaking territories. But there is a diversion in Gru and Lucy’s bland new life in the suburbs, posing as Chet, a solar panel salesman, and Blanche, a hairdresser. The film begins oddly and rather charmingly resembling an old TV series like Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie as this family with its heavy burden of secrets tries to make the best of things.

With terrible inevitability, the ghastly Maxime turns his cockroach gun on the most poignant and vulnerable members of Gru’s family, and a more serious, or even more ironic and cynical, film might seek to make the effects of this situation slightly more frightening, harder to reverse, more contemptible in fact. But that’s not the style of this film. It’s not a masterpiece, and no one needs Despicable Me 5, but being pleasant without pretension is not easy.

• Despicable Me 4 is now out in Australia, in the US on July 3 and in the UK on July 12.