Despicable Me 4

Back in 2010, the original Despicable Me was a surprise smash and launched one of the most successful and longest-lasting animation franchises ever. The secret, of course, is the Minions: those denim-clad yellow blobs of chummy chaos, amiably yearning to be the best sidekicks a villain ever had even if they're far too inept and friendly to really spread evil. But the real success of the first film lay in its surprisingly sweet story, of wannabe supervillain Gru (Carrell, sporting an outrageous middle European accent) having his heart warmed by his three adopted daughters. Between the comedy of the Minions and the touching family story, Despicable Me won audiences over. The following Minions-centric prequels have leaned heavily on the comedy, but the Gru-centric films of the eponymous Despicable Me series have lost track of what made the original so special.

Frankly, the continued determination to build up the now-reformed Gru's home life and workdays at the Anti-Villain League has left the series so overstuffed that Despicable Me 4 has to lop off a whole limb of the family tree, with freshly introduced brother Dru among multiple familiar faces kept off screen. Instead, there's a whole new vanload of supporting characters and antagonists as Dru, the girls, wife and fellow AVL agent Lucy (Wiig), and their new baby, Junior, are sent to a safe house to avoid the threat of new villain Maxime Le Mal (Ferrell), who has turned himself into a giant cockroach.

The idea seems to make Gru and family fishes out of water – a bunch of lovable weirdos in suburbia. But that’s the set up for the entire franchise, that everyday folks seemingly turn a blind eye to a madman and his little monsters living next door. Le Mal himself is the weakest villain in the series (and that’s saying something) and was seemingly written as a thin excuse to get another mid-2000s comedy star with a dodgy European accent in the cast. Once he’s there, he’s barely an afterthought. The script by Mike White (who may have been locked in the writer’s room by Illumination Studios after working on the superior Migration) and series co-creator Ken Daurio feels like a stack of B-plots stapled together rather than a full story. The girls taking up martial arts? Goes nowhere. Lucy becoming a hairdresser? Means nothing. Gru getting blackmailed by the rich girl next door (King)? Comes out of nowhere, goes straight back there. There’s not even a payoff on the obvious setup of Gru’s Minions going toe-to-claw with Le Mal’s army of cockroaches.

Thank goodness, then, for the Minions themselves. Even they aren’t immune to the dead-end scripting, with the super-powered Mega Minions failing to tug on Superman’s cape, but a recurrent gag about a vending machine provides a few decent chortles. Yet we have two Minions movies, and they still feel as weirdly fresh, funny, and endearing as ever. That’s what makes it all so disappointing that these films just can’t find a new scheme for Gru that’s as despicably delightful as the original.