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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nFor a franchise that has been fairly consistent with its style of PG animated humor, the \u201cDespicable Me\u201d movies are kind of all over the place for me. I couldn\u2019t stand the first one, loved the second one, thought the first \u201cMinions\u201d spinoff had its moments, felt the shtick was stale for the third one, and was pleasantly surprised by the second \u201cMinions.\u201d Now comes the fourth entry chronologically from the first, the sixth in the series overall. Unfortunately, I found this one to be on the lower end of the spectrum. It didn\u2019t send me into a days-long depression over the state of family entertainment like the original did, but it is quite possibly the worst since the first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new movie finds reformed supervillain Gru (Steve Carell, his Eastern-European accent as grating as ever) at odds with his old high school rival, the coackroach-obsessed Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell). The very idea of a high school for aspiring supervillains is cooler than anything onscreen here, and since this series likes to do prequels, it might be a good idea to set one there. Gru and his new colleagues in the Anti-Villain League are able to imprison Maxime, but he escapes and vows revenge on Gru and his family, especially his new baby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The family is forced to go into hiding, and everybody has little B-stories where they try to start a new life in a posh neighborhood under new identities. Wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig) tries to become a hairdresser with disastrous results. Middle daughter Edith (Dana Gaier) stands up for little sister Agnes (Madison Polan) at karate class. Oldest daughter Margot (Miranda Cosgrove)\u2026 gets about three lines. Gru tries to endear himself to his snooty neighbor (Steven Colbert), but ends up getting blackmailed into pulling a heist with the neighbor\u2019s aspiring-villain daughter Poppy (Joey King). The movie could have had a more positive message by having Gru teach Poppy that a life of villainy is not the way to go, but no, she\u2019s validated and wants to be a supervillain as much as ever by the film\u2019s end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Minions (all voiced by Pierre Coffin) get their own subplot where some of them are given superpowers by AVL boss Ramsbottom (Steve Coogan). This thread doesn\u2019t work for me because the Minions were already non-human without many physical limitations anyway, so giving them superpowers just seems like a lateral move. Example: one of them gets the power to stretch. Okay, but another Minion, one that isn\u2019t given superpowers, gets stuffed into a vending machine and spends the entire movie living there. Seems to me the Minions were pretty stretchy already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Almost all of the spoken jokes are terrible \u2013 painful, even. I think there was a logic that if Carell and Ferrell (or Carell\/Colbert) were just allowed to be in a scene together, the chemistry they\u2019ve shown in other projects would just punch up the material automatically. There was admittedly something of a precedent for this, as Carell\u2019s chemistry with longtime collaborator Alan Arkin did elevate the last \u201cMinions\u201d movie, but that\u2019s not the case here. This isn\u2019t a rewarding reunion of Ron Burgandy and Brick Tamland. Nor does the movie capitalize on the potential for a Gru\/Megamind crossover, even though both characters starred in 2010 animated movies about supervillains turning their lives around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDespicable Me 4\u201d is too innocuous to make me truly mad, and the animation is as bouncy and pleasing as ever. The new baby is undeniably adorable and I thought the visual physical gags hit at an agreeable rate. A wheelchair equipped with monster truck tires got me giggling, I\u2019ll admit it. But it\u2019s clear that very little attention was given to the script, and characters and storylines are underdeveloped even for the low bar I have for this series. I seriously doubt that this movie is going to turn any fans off of the \u201cDespicable Me\u201d\/\u201dMinions\u201d franchise, but I even more seriously doubt that it\u2019s going to turn around anybody that wasn\u2019t a fan already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDespicable Me 4\u201d is rated PG for action and rude humor. Its running time is 95 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver For a franchise that has been fairly consistent with its style of PG animated humor, the \u201cDespicable Me\u201d movies are kind of all over the place… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":59766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2755],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59771,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59769\/revisions\/59771"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}