Movie Thoughts: Despicable Me 4 (2024)

• Released: June 15, 2024
  
• Directed by: Chris Renaud, Patrick Delage
• Running time: 1h 35min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

After a villain swears revenge, Gru and his family must go into hiding to protect themselves. Meanwhile, the AVL is assembling a super force of Minions to protect the world.

My Thoughts

I'm not super big on the Despicable Me movies or anything, but I do overall like them. Or at least aspects of each of them. Especially the first one I think is rather decent. So this one...it's fine, honestly. Perfectly entertaining. 

It looks visually good, but also not fantastic or anything, the story is interesting enough, and the characters are still fun. I also think that this is probably the last movie in the main series, because its ending feels rather finale-y, with a big dance party ending where all major characters from the last movies re-appear for a cameo. Even Vector, who they somehow got down from space.

My favorite part of this movie is Gru bonding with this wannabe-villain kid of his new neighbors, it was a fun aspect of the movie and it's nice to see Gru do some villain-stuff again even if at first it's against his will. The mentor-student bond he ended up developing briefly with Poppy was nice and they got a cool honey badger out of it. 

What I don't think works as well though is this movie's lack of conclusion to a lot of the character's arcs. Particularly around fitting into their new lives. We get a subplot where Agnes won't lie about her new name and this gets them in trouble at martial arts training. A tennis subplot with Gru and his new neighbors. Another one where Margot has trouble fitting in at her new school. And finally one where Lucy acts like a professional hairdresser. And none of these arcs really...go anywhere? They're all just kind of dropped halfway into the movie and never really resurface with any payoff. The only arc at Mayflower that really had an impact on the plot was the one where Poppy and Gru pull of a heist together. So like...why introduce all these subplot if you're not gonna give any of them a payoff?

Another thing that really irks me by now is that four movies in the Despicable Me franchise has never done anything meaningful with Edith's character. She's always just kind of there, and she's honestly my favorite of the three sisters so it sucks that yet again she's pushed off to the sidelines without an arc of her own. Even baby Gru Jr., who is new, gets an arc in this movie, but not Edith. 

Also, on a side note, why is the baby's name Gru Jr. and not Felonious Jr.? Gru is the last name of our main character, Felonius Gru Sr.. So now they canonically have a baby whose name is just Gru Gru Jr.. (If the baby's name is actually Felonius Gru Jr. it's at least never brought up in the movie itself. They always call him Gru Jr.). 

As for the Minion subplot, I didn't care for it (per usual) but it didn't harm the movie or anything, at least to me.

So yeah, perfectly serviceable movie. If you like the franchise you'll probably like this just fine. I'm not super into it and the lack of any conclusion to the many character arcs is annoying, but overall it's fine.