Despicable Me 4 (2024)
★½ — Despicable Me 4 (2024)
My kids were bored. Let that sink in. Two children who will happily rewatch the same forty minutes of YouTube content on a loop for six hours straight, who once made me sit through an entire Minions compilation at half seven on a Sunday morning, sat there watching Despicable Me 4 with the glazed expressions of people enduring a particularly dull corporate training video. When you've lost the under-tens, it's over. It was over a long time ago, actually. The franchise just hasn't noticed yet.
There's a plot here, technically. Gru and the family relocate to a new town. There's a bratty neighbour kid. There's a new villain: a flamboyant, egomaniacal former child star who wants revenge on Gru for some slight from their shared past. It's the kind of premise that might have worked in the hands of a writing team that was trying. Instead it feels like it was assembled from leftover parts, bits and pieces from earlier films given fresh coats of paint and repackaged for another theatrical run. I loved Despicable Me (2010) when it first came out precisely because it felt like it had something genuine going on underneath the silliness. A lonely man who didn't know how to love learning how to love. Simple, but it worked. That film had a heartbeat. This one has a marketing department.
Steve Carell is still giving it his all, and I genuinely feel for him. The accent, the physicality, the commitment, it's all still there. But you can't will a script to life through sheer force of performance. The jokes land with a thud, the emotional beats are ticked off like items on a checklist, and whenever the film remembers it's supposed to have something to say about family or belonging or growing up, it says it in the most perfunctory way imaginable before rushing back to the next pratfall.
And then there are the Minions. I remember when they were actually funny. A weird, anarchic little touch of chaos that offset the sentimentality nicely. Now they are noise. Pure, exhausting, relentless noise. Grunting, falling over, repeating variations of gags I'm certain I've seen in every single entry in this franchise. There's a particular kind of comedy fatigue that sets in when you realise a joke is being told not because anyone thinks it's funny anymore but because it's what's expected. The Minions aren't characters at this point. They're brand assets.
The animation is technically competent. Shiny, bright, and completely hollow. There's no visual imagination at work, no sequence that made me sit up and think, right, that was worth seeing. Compare it to something like my review of The Lorax (2012), another animated film I found largely disappointing, and even that had the occasional burst of visual energy. Despicable Me 4 coasts entirely on familiarity.
The new characters are forgettable, the family dynamics feel manufactured, and the whole thing somehow drags despite clocking in at well under two hours. Even the musical moments, which used to feel like genuine little injections of fun, arrive and depart like obligations being fulfilled rather than ideas being expressed. It's not offensive. I want to be clear about that. It's just deeply, profoundly unnecessary. A film that exists because the numbers said it should exist, not because anyone had a story they needed to tell.
The original Despicable Me 2 (2013) was already showing the cracks. By this point the cracks are load-bearing walls. The series had genuine warmth once, a reason to care about these characters. That's long gone. What's left is a yellow stain on the screen, as I said to my wife the moment the credits rolled, and she laughed, and honestly that was the best joke of the afternoon.
One and a half stars. Half a point for nostalgia, and one for the fact that, eventually, mercifully, it ends.
Rating: ★½ | Year: 2024 | Watched: 2025-08-10
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Kids · Netflix Standard with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Chris Renaud: Despicable Me (2010) · The Secret Life of Pets (2016) · The Lorax (2012) · Despicable Me 2 (2013)
More with Steve Carell: Beautiful Boy (2018) · Despicable Me (2010) · Little Miss Sunshine (2006) · Dinner for Schmucks (2010)
More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
