Rating – ***1/2 (3.5/5)
There isn’t any cinematic boundary that the Despicable Me series is on its course to break and that’s completely fine. Having a jolly good time at the movies with a franchise and world you adore and have been invested in for five films is something we desperately need. To its credit, Despicable Me 4 offers that in abundance.
The biggest achievement for this franchise, now with its sixth (overall) film is that it can still be funny and fluffy despite the fact that we have been watching and watching the various adventures and variations time and again.
However, the Despicable Me franchise seems to have its course and just having newer villains for Gru (Steve Carell) isn’t exciting anymore. The plot continues to get thinner and thinner and sometimes, it is just hanging by a thread until a good Minion moment comes along and saves the day.
The domination of the presence of minions has so evidently grown over the four films where it becomes difficult to distinguish if this is a Minions film or Gru’s new adventure. The lines were blurred with when Minions: The Rise of Gru came along but it has perhaps blended now with this film as minions become your reason to laugh and have fun.
It isn’t that you aren’t invested in Gru and this family and it helps that this time there are additional characters and elements that add to the ‘awwww’ factor abundantly; but you can almost feel the writers’ plight of trying to come up with newer ideas to keep things interesting and somehow, propel the screenplay.
Will Ferrell tries his level best to infuse some gravitas and goofiness into being Maxime La Mal, the new bad guy but just like has been the case lately, it falls flat especially considering that in a meagre runtime of 94 minutes, a lot of time is wasted on the build-up. That becomes another indicator of how these films have become lesser and lesser about Gru and the family and more about the Minions.
To be able to try a thousand antics and situations and still make you laugh on the new gag that is practiced on minions is an underrated feat and that deserves applause. I, admittedly, wasn’t a huge fan of the ‘Mega Minions’, especially the visual element of it but owing to it having some hilarious situations and even spoofing Avengers to an extent had me laughing and enjoying it.
Despicable Me 4 does have a few moments that appeal to the nostalgia factor as well, where the climax sequence acts as a lovely nostalgia piece and, I don’t know if this was intended to serve as an indicator of something – but if it was, this might be the last we see of this series which is a bittersweet moment.
But hey, definitely not the last of Minions. I don’t think we can ever get enough of them. The line of not insulting your intelligence by being supremely lazy with the screenplay and still maintaining the fluff and fun is balanced just about enough to make the film a good time. We need a good time.
