Despicable Me 4

Director: Chris Renaud

Co-Director: Patrick Delage

Screenplay: Mike White and Ken Daurio

Voices: Steve Carell (Gru), Kristen Wiig (Lucy), Joey King (Poppy Prescott), Will Ferrell (Maxime), Sofía Vergara (Valentina), Chris Renaud (Principal Übelschlecht), Pierre Coffin (Minions), Dana Gaier (Edith), Madison Polan (Agnes), Miranda Cosgrove (Margo), Steve Coogan (Silas), Stephen Colbert (Perry Prescott), Chloe Fineman (Patsy Prescott)

MPAA Rating: PG

Year of Release: 2024

Country: U.S.

Despicable Me 4, which is actually the sixth film in the series if you count the two Minions movies, betrays some of the inherent exhaustion in any series of this size and longevity (the first move came out 15 years ago), but it also finds ample new avenues of humor and pushes enough familiar buttons to earn its stripes. Way back in 2010 it would have been hard to imagine that Gru (Steve Carell), the hunchbacked, chrome-domed, Easter European-accented supervillain of the title, would be able to ride such a lengthy character arc, but here we are, having followed him from being a scheming baddie hellbent on stealing the moon, to an adoptive father, to a husband and father, to a crusading hero hellbent on capturing other villains as part of the Anti-Villain League (AVF).

Despicable Me 4 throws a few new wrenches into the works, starting with the new arch-villain Maxime (Will Ferrell), a ridiculous coiffed Frenchman who has been at odds with Gru since their schooldays. Maxime outs Gru as a member of the Anti-Villain League, which forces him, his wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig), and their kids Edith (Dana Gaier), Agnes (Madison Polan), and Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), as well as their baby, into hiding. This provides one of the film’s richest veins of humor, as Gru and Lucy find themselves having to blend into a posh neighborhood of gleaming yuppies, especially their neighbors, Perry and Patsy Prescott (Stephen Colbert and Chloe Fineman).

It is here that Gru also meets the new partner he never knew he needed: the Prescotts’ preteen daughter Poppy (Joey King), whose frizzy red hair, shining braces, and charming lisp hide a cunning would-be villain who can’t wait to work with Gru to break into his old school, Lycée Pas Bon (which means “Not Good High School”), and steal its mascot, a bug-eyed honey badger. Meanwhile, Maxime and his red-lipped partner, Valentina (Sofia Vergara), are always in the wings, waiting for any opportunity to destroy Gru and the life he has built. Thankfully, Gru still has all the Minions at his disposal, and that nattering bunch of yellow-pill assistants prove that they can still provide plenty of comic relief from the sidelines. A running gag about one of them getting stuck in a vending machine is funnier than you would imagine it might be, although the highlight may very well be a Minion acting as an extremely biased line judge when Gru takes on Perry at the country club tennis court. Much attention is given to a quintet of Minions who morph into Fantastic Four-style superheroes, and it works despite the obviousness of the conceit.

Despicable Me 4 marks the return of Chris Renaud to the director’s chair. He co-directed the first two films in the series, but has stepped back into a producing role on all the subsequent entries (in the intervening years he directed The Lorax and the two Secret Lives of Pets movies). Renaud maintains the same sense of absurdist visual humor that animated the previous films while also building on the characters. The screenplay by Mike White, who started in indie comedies and dramas (Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl) and recently penned the animated comedy Migration (2023), and Ken Daurio, who has had a hand in writing all of the previous Despicable Me movies, doesn’t stray too far from the accepted formula, but it works well within the parameters. After all, we wouldn’t things going too far astray, and it never hurts to punch a bit on the nostalgia button, which the film does quite well in a scene that plays as an excuse to bring together all of Gru’s previous foes. After 15 years and six films, how can you blame them?

Despicable Me 4 Collector’s Edition Blu-ray + Digital Code

Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
Audio	English Dolby Atmos French Canadian Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 surround Latin American Spanish Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 surround
Subtitles	English, French, Spanish
Supplements	Minions Mini-Movies: Game Over and Over and Benny’s Birthday Deleted/Extended/Alternate Scenes “Despicable Dialogue” featurette “Meet the Cast” featurette “Making Of” featurette “Mega Minion Mayhem” featurette “Rogues Gallery” featurette “How to Draw” featurette
Distributor	Universal Studios
Release Date	September 24, 2024

COMMENTS
Despicable Me 4 looks great in its 1080p/AVC-encoded port to Blu-ray. The digital image has excellent depth and texture and a lot of wonderful detail that pops nicely. The movie is generally very bright, with the majority of the scenes set in the daylight with plenty of intense primary colors, from the green of the well-manicured lawns in Gru’s new neighborhood, to the Day-Glo yellow of the Minions. The Dolby Atmos soundtrack is similarly first-rate, with great sonic separation in the surround channels, plenty of power in the low end, and a lot of enveloping sound effects. Kids will love the inclusion of two generally funny Minion “Mini-Movies”: Game Over and Over, in which the Minions discover a game controller that controls other Minions, and Benny’s Birthday, in which Benny is trapped in a time loop of a Minion-style birthday party. There is also a decent amount of behind-the-scenes supplements, starting with “Despicable Dialogue,” a 4-minute featurette composed entirely of footage of cast members (Steve Carell, Will Ferrell, Joey King, Kristen Wiig, Stephen Colbert, and others ) recording their dialogue (fun fact I learned: apparently almost all them wear glasses while recording dialogue for animated movies). “Meet the Cast” is a series of seven short featurettes that run 22 minutes total and feature interviews with the main voice actors (Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Joey King, Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, and Madison Polan, Stephen Colbert and Chloe Fineman, Sofia Vergara, and Will Ferrell), as well as members of the crew. “Making Of” is a 10-minute … well … making-of featurette that includes interviews with a wide swath of cast and crew reflecting on the origins of the film’s ideas and how they put it all together. “Mega Minion Mayhem” is a 4-minute featurette about the creation of the film’s quintet of super-powered Minions. “Rogues Gallery” is an amusing 4-minute featurette that takes us through all the villains who appear in the film’s final sequence. And, finally, in the 12-minute “How to Draw,” head of story Habib Louati, shows us how to draw all five of the Mega Minions.

Thoughts? E-mail James Kendrick

Overall Rating: (3)