Despicable Me 4 has an unusual flaw: too much plot potential

Four official films and two Minions spin-offs in, introduced to the world in Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud’s 2010 animated comedy Despicable Me somehow still has enough steam to feed its setting. There’s inherently a lot of story and comedic potential in a world where supervillains have network conventions and schools for aspiring young bad guys, and they treat being a Big Bad as a full-time job.

But Despicable Me 4 suffers from a strange problem: This world has too many potential. Rather than focusing on just a few threads, Renaud and the rest of the filmmakers attempt to tackle a bunch of different storylines without fully exploring any of them — or even connecting them in any meaningful way.

(Editorial note: This review contains minor spoilers for the setup Despicable Me 4.)

Despicable Me 4 opens with supervillain turned family man Gru (Steve Carell) and his family going into witness protection after cockroach-themed villain Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell) escapes from a maximum-security prison. With Maxime, who just happens to be Gru’s high school rival, on his tail, Gru and his wife and seemingly never-aging children assume false identities as the Cunninghams, a perfectly normal family living in an upper-middle-class suburb. Meanwhile, Maxime and his aloof femme fatale girlfriend, Valentina (Sofía Vergara), hunt Gru down in a giant cockroach-themed plane. Oh, and a few of the Minions get superpowers.

All of these threads have a lot to explore: Each of them could be developed into a core plot point. Instead, every possible hook is simply skipped. None of them are given enough time to develop into anything truly compelling, or with enough connective tissue to hold the moving parts together.

And there are more subplots throughout the film. The family’s preppy pre-teen neighbor, Poppy Prescott (Joey King), is actually an aspiring supervillain who admires Gru and blackmails him into helping her achieve supervillain status. Gru and his secret agent wife, Lucy (Kristen Wiig), try to fit in among their country club neighbors. The Minions form a superhero team. Gru and Lucy’s youngest daughter, Agnes (Madison Skyy Polan), faces a moral dilemma after lying about her identity. The whole reason the villain specifically hates Gru is because of a grudge from their ninth-grade talent show at that school for aspiring bad guys.

Image: Lighting

Think about that: there is a whole school for would-be villains, tucked away in the mountains like a villainous Hogwarts, and it’s treated like a backdrop set. Likewise, none of the other individually compelling plot points are explored in any meaningful way. They all feel separate, too, never really intersecting. The only connective tissue is the series of physical gags.

Despicable Me 4‘s physical comedy is still top notch, with some good running gags and background laughs. There’s a particularly hilarious sequence involving the Mega Minions trying (and utterly failing) to save various people in the city. It’s full of great jokes, but it goes nowhere. The Mega Minions, so hyped in the film’s marketing and trailers, barely have any scenes. Even when they’re set up for the film’s big climax, they only appear for a split second.

Despicable Me 4 is full of good ideas, many of which play into what people love about these movies: Minion antics, Gru’s villainy versus his normal family life, and over-the-top Big Bad Guy theatrics. But all of these bits and pieces are jumbled together and don’t cohere enough to make sense as a story. The film is dissonant, like a bunch of musicians playing unfamiliar instruments (or a bunch of — dare I say it — Minions with instruments) trying to make a coherent song. But in the midst of the chaos, the music occasionally starts to sound good — a cool, jazzy saxophone solo briefly rises above the cacophony. You just have to grit your teeth and ignore the clattering drums and out-of-tune oboes around it.

Despicable Me 4 will be in theaters from July 3.