Are you still here? That’s how I approached Despicable Me 4, an intellectual property that had done all its emotional work already in the first movie – how super-super villain Gru became a decent sort – but somehow miraculously re-purposed itself and sailed on to franchise glory.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this fourth iteration is that everyone involved seems to still give a stuff. The story is zippy, the voice cast is committed, the animation is lively and colourful, it has a good soundtrack. It’s busy, too busy really, but it’s still pulling out the stops, being inventive when it could just ride along on its own coat tails.
You could start here with no prior knowledge. The film itself fills in the gaps, subtly – animated bald one-time Bond villain Gru is now working for the Anti-Villain League and as the film opens is at his school reunion, where he tangles with Maxime le Mal, the former school bully who, it’s revealed, has now developed into something of a super-villain himself. Harnessing the insect’s indestructibility and unsquishability, Maxime has become a kind of giant cockroach-man.
In short order the AVL apprehends Maxime and throws him in jail, but he’s soon escaped, vowing revenge. Gru, his wife and four children and his hyperactive little yellow former henchmen the Minions are forced into hiding under assumed names. Will Maxime find them? Or is there an even more pressing danger in the next-door neighbour’s daughter, a snotty little madame called Poppy who has sensed that there’s something off about “Chet” and his brood.
Steve Carell voices Gru, an unrecognisable Will Ferrell voices Maxime, while Sofia Vergara is his appallingly stuck-up trophy girlfriend Valentina. The storyline about Gru’s domestic set-up is a touch unnecessary and Kristen Wiig voices wife Lucy as if she were just a touch superfluous, which in fact she is. Steve Coogan is back playing Silas Ramsbottom, head of the AVL, while Pierre Coffin (who co-directed the first three DMs) provides the voices for all the Minions – tough gig, well played.
They have had their own successful spin-off, of course, also directed by Coffin, and at all times the Minions threaten to yank the limelight their way. But even though at one point there’s a subplot in which five of the Minions are granted super-powers, this is an avenue wisely left largely unexplored by director Chris Renaud and Patrick Delage, and writers Mike White and Ken Daurio. The Minions for the most part remain a comedy Greek chorus and sideshow rather than the main event. If something is going on with Gru et al, somewhere in the background a Minion will be doing something stupid but that’s about as far as it goes.
Daurio has been on board since the first movie but it’s possibly White who’s the secret weapon here. Busy Mike has written about six movies and written and directed three seasons of The White Lotus since the last DM movie in 2017. Busy, talented man.
Did I like it? Yes. Did I like it a lot? No. The plot is a touch dull and it’s noticeable how much more diverting the incidentals are. A man skiiing down a mountainside on molten Swiss cheese, for example, tickled me. And the arrival of what looked like the car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang also made me smirk, as did the little subplot to kidnap a honey badger – can’t remember what that was about but it was fun.
The cultural references keep coming and it slides along on a superficial slick of writers-room energy and animation can-do. Pharrell Williams, Blackpink and Van Halen pop up on the soundtrack, which seems entirely as it should be. The Despicable Me franchise continues to be good. Could Kung Fu Panda take a lesson from it, and not in kung fu?
Despicable Me 4 – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
