Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Despicable Me 4’ on VOD, Another Entry In This Franchise That Cares More About Jokes Than Coherence

Despicable Me 4, the sixth Minions-oriented movie that continued the series’ absurdly prolific ROI with a $750 million worldwide box office grab (and still counting), is now available to stream on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video. This franchise has already bulldozed $5.2 billion into Universal and Illumination’s coffers, and that’s just ticket-sales money – you’ve surely seen Minion faces on kumquats and snack cakes and other assorted supermarket effluvia, thanks to an endorsement deal-slash-marketing blitz that threatens to blanket the earth every two-to-three years. In other words, ubiquity is this series’ strength. And even though some of us have Had Enough Of This Silliness, the numbers don’t lie, and that’s the reason these movies exist. Oh, and to make children giggle. Can’t forget the children.

DESPICABLE ME 4: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open with a brouhaha at Gru’s (Steve Carell) high school reunion. It’s a high school for supervillains, of course, and it stirs the decades-old rivalry between Gru and Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell), stemming from, OF COURSE, a performance of a Culture Club hit at a talent show. But! Gru, who you surely remember from past movies is a reformed villain these days, is undercover for the Anti-Villain League! He captures Maxime and heads home to his family: Wife Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig); their three adopted daughters Edith (Dana Gaier), Agnes (Madison Polan) and Margo (Miranda Cosgrove); baby Gru Jr. (Tara Strong); and countless Minions (all voiced by franchise co-creator Pierre Coffin). There’s a pet goat roaming around, and a group of Minions acts as a perpetually at-the-ready diaper squad for Gru Jr., whipping off a Huggie and firing it out the window and powdering his bum and rediapering him lickety-split, all to the frantic and guitar-and-drum batter of classic Van Halen. As you do.

But a problem happens, as problems are wont to do. Maxime escapes from prison, prompting AVL honchos to put Gru and the fam into a witness protection program. Now, if you’re thinking that a world-famous supervillain who once notoriously burgled the Moon might have a hard time blending into a blandly sunny suburb, well, you’re thinking ahead of the plot, which will get to that, addressing its own ramshackle precariousness. But for now, Gru and everyone moves to the city of Mayflower and into a cruddy little house, the Diaper Squad in tow, while the rest of the Minions are shipped off to the AVL to, presumably and eventually, destroy the place. 

This all sets in motion various hijinx and antix that never hold together as a plot, not that anyone ever intended to make a movie that makes sense: Gru meets the neighbors, preppy snobs Perry (Stephen Colbert) and Patsy (Chloe Fineman) and their teen daughter Poppy (Joey King), prompting wackiness at a country-club tennis court. Edith and Agnes square off against a jerk karate instructor. Lucy nearly burns down the salon on her first day as a hairdresser. Poppy recognizes Gru and blackmails him into helping her execute a heist. A Minion is trapped in a vending machine for the entire film. Gru struggles to win the love of Gru Jr. Maxime and his girlfriend Valentina (Sofia Vergara) plot to kidnap Gru Jr. The Minions at the AVL are subjected to an experiment that renders them superpowered Megaminions that very suspiciously resemble a bunch of Marvel characters. And perhaps all this will end with a dance party, but hey, NO SPOILERS, right? Right.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: On multiple levels, and far more so than on previous franchise entries, DM4 conspicuously resembles The Incredibles, which did this type of spoofery far more coherently. 

Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Among all the celebs doing asinine accents in these films, I’ve always enjoyed Carell’s pseudo-Slavic tone, which is funny, whimsical and distinctive. 

Memorable Dialogue: I know Minionspeak is mostly arglebargle, but I’m pretty sure one of them leapt into a fray while exclaiming, “Suppository!”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: You have to admire the Despicable Mes, for always and without fail aiming for the joke, the joke, the joke. They leave the sentimental slop for other kid movies, and hefty thematics for Pixar. They’re junky of plot, occasionally overbearing, consistently loud and colorful, and essentially about nothing but the pursuit of laughter. It’s a pure, possibly noble, M.O. Nobody’s manipulating you to sob into your Jujyfruits or force-feeding you sentiments about the power of friendship or family togetherness. None of that. What we have here – for the sixth time, I must reiterate – is little yellow vaguely sentient globs chattering and burping, sanitary action-violence, birdshit gags, big fat needle drops and caricature-as-character. Some of it misses, but hopefully, you find six or eight or 12 things to laugh at. Such is the nature of comedy.  

And so DM4 is more more more of the same same same, for better or worse worse worse. These films evade criticism by stirring delight in the 12-and-under demographic for 90 minutes at a time, as the laughter of children is UNDENIABLE. As Monsters Inc. taught us, it’s a clean, untapped, renewable energy source. What you, old person, think about it is moot as a very moot thing. 

That won’t stop me from writing this very moot paragraph, though. I have a job to do, you know. Are the Minions annoying? Maybe. (My thought: No, they’re fine. Paw Patrol though? THAT’S annoying.) Perhaps, if you squint hard enough, you could find some satire here – family life in suburbia, the struggles in raising children, wearisome tropes of comic book movies (a character pipes up after a Megaminions sighting with the searing-hot line, “I’m sick of superheroes!”, which is about as deep as the pop-cultural commentary gets). Does anyone really care about this stuff? Minions pranking each other? Gru rescuing his baby boy and finally earning his admiration? Not really, and that’s the point. The Despicable Me/Minions franchise has stuck to the same formula for 14 years (!) and as long as the youngs keep chuckling and the money keeps rolling in, it will continue. It functions on those two levels quite well, which is not nothing. Remember, there are many movies out there that work on zero levels. Zero! That’s actually nothing.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Evaporative entertainment has its value.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.