Despicable Me 4 Review
Gru and his family is back for one more serving of fun animated comedy while at the same time hinting a possible closing for his story. Here’s my Despicable Me 4 review opens July 3.
So the cast has returned for this fourth outing and this time they are focusing on a brand new villain named Maxime De Mal (Will Ferrell) together with his girlfriend Victoria (Sophia Vergara). The big catalyst for change here is that Gru’s identity has been compromised and they enter this protection agency and relocate with a few minions. Meanwhile, the rest of the minions are brought to the AVL headquarters as additional workers including five who becomes the “Mega Minions”. Back with Gru, they have a hard time adjusting and keeping a low profile to the point where one of their creepy neighbors named Poppy Prescott (Joey King) coerce Gru and Gru Jr. to go on a heist back at Gru’s old villain school to steal the prized honey badger from the school principal which directly leads to a confrontation between Maxime and Gru.
Despicable Me 4 was surprisingly good. I was not expecting to keep me engrossed for the entire duration. Even my daughter liked it all throughout as in other cases, there would be these slow moments where she’d try to amuse herself; but for Despicable Me 4, that wasn’t there at all.
And that’s a good thing in my book already.
The humor was still there and they did have a nice break between Gru shenanigans and Minion tomfoolery. Although I have to admit that it felt like they padded the runtime a little bit too much with this story by giving us different plots to follow. But I also feel like this was a step in the right direction to keep things fresh. Maybe if we get another DM movie, they’ll follow this formula.
The weakest part for me thought would have to be the Minions. Yes, we gave them scenes and they are doing things here and they are doing ore sensible things as opposed to being literally just the comedy break from the plot, but it wasn’t all that good for me. The Mega Minions were really just there to give us more funny scenes (which works most of the times, but a miss in others) but they could have wrapped up that bit a little nicer.
I did like what they did with the introduction of Poppy Prescott who kind of becomes Gru’s protege as she manages to coerce the former villain to join her in her heist. It’s pretty obvious that Illumination will be doing a spin-off of sorts for the Poppy character and all that especially since it looks like they will be putting Gru on semi-retirement. I’m guessing this film was also used as a vehicle to introduce her and whatever project they have in store.
I’m sensing that this could be a villain-style school series with Poppy and some “good” villain classmates as well as some bad, bad guy classmates.
Speaking of bad guys, I’m not too keen with this film’s bad guy Maxime and his girlfriend Victoria. I would have wanted to see and here a Mugatu-esque villain rather than a faux French guy. If I wanted faux french we could have gotten Borat himself Sacah Baron Cohen who also worked with Ferrell in Talladega Nights.
Vergara’s Victoria however felt so much like Modern Family’s Gloria without the staggard Columbia accent and a more phoned in performance.
Overall, I though Despicable Me 4 was a fun movie. It’s got enough of the same humor from minions and Gru alike to keep this going. But it really does feel like an unofficial send off for our bald bad guy and dad. Either way, highly recommended to see this as a family.
Verdict: 9/10
Special thanks to SM Cinemas and Universal Pictures PH!
