Despicable Me 4

Is this as good as the previous Despicable Me movies?

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The Good: Just like in the other movies, the voice acting in this movie is great. Steve Carell and Will Ferrell do such an amazing job at doing their voices and really do their best to bring their characters to life. In addition to the voice acting, one of the few things I really thought was fun was the karaoke at the end. I know it wasn’t crazy special to most people, but I got a kick out of Steve Carell and Will Ferrell singing “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”

The Meh: At the beginning of the movie I noticed that they got Pharell Williams to do the music again for the movie, which I think is a great idea, and I think the initial song was pretty fun. After that, I forgot about the music and didn’t even think about it for the rest of the movie since none of it stood out. This had me a little disappointed since Pharall did the 1st movie and the music in that film is iconic.

There is a new character in the movie, Poppy. She is one of Gru and Lucy’s neighbors. While I didn’t mind her character, I just thought her character was an extremely strange addition to the movie. On one hand she is desperate to be a villain and wants Gru’s help to become one, which ends up having consequences throughout the whole movie. But on the other hand, by the end of the movie she also helps Gru take down the villain (Maxime). Despite that, there is no conversation, acknowledgement, or thanks shared between Poppy and Gru at the end, which I thought was a missed opportunity to at least have some deeper connection blossom between the two characters. I also thought it was strange to me that she had more screen time and dialogue than Gru’s daughters.

The Bad: In the other movies, it really felt that there was something for everyone to do, whether it be Gru, Lucy, the girls, or the minions. In this movie, they really only focused on Gru and sidelined the rest of the characters. For Gru, his whole goal in the movie was to get his son to like him more. While he was able to do this by the end of the movie, it was only due to the random adventures and subplots of the movie and not due to anything he specifically was trying to do to connect with his son. Despite having their developing relationship grow, since it was not due to anything intentional he did, his character just felt bland and boring during the movie.

As for Lucy and the girls, they were either at karate, work, a grocery store, or just chilling at home, which didn’t help me grow attached more to characters at all or see them grow. For example, Lucy failed her first day of work at a hair salon, and because she failed, she had to run away from the lady she helped while at the grocery store. It seems that the writers didn’t know what anyone but Gru should do in the movie, so everything the girls do doesn’t have to do anything with the rest of the movie.

I also really did not care for the minions in this movie at all. In most movies, they are there for comedic relief and then they usually have 1 or 2 “smart” moments where they are actually helpful. In this movie the minions just felt dumber the whole time, weren’t funny, and were not helpful at all. This was disappointing to me because they had a lot of screen time with minions and the Super Minions, but all the time was just wasted potential.

Overall: This movie felt like it had a single idea for a movie but didn’t really know where to go with it. In order to fill out the time of the movie, they had to think of random scenarios that the characters may get in, and they somehow were able to put it all together. I didn’t find it as original, fun, or unique as the other 3 movies either, and the plot was all over the place. Despite this, my little cousins did really enjoy this, so I know kids will love this movie, which does skew my rating just a bit.

Rating: 3/5