Critic Reviews

Returning director Chris Renaud, co-director of parts one and two, knows his way around the characters, and he knows what his audience wants: cartoon mayhem, mild naughtiness from the Minions, social awkwardness from Gru.

It’s a dizzyingly efficient blitzkrieg of family fun, crammed with barely connected haunted house, martial arts, 007, country club and superhero-spoofing vignettes.

It’s cheap pandering to fans, but I really couldn’t stay mad at a movie that uses Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon” as a point of contention and has two shout-outs to one of the best movies of 1985, “Real Genius.”

The sequel isn’t a masterpiece of children’s entertainment by any stretch, but it is sufficiently bizarre and thrilling enough to turn the head of any kid, parent or – judging by my curiously populated press screening the other night – fully grown and childless adult around and around till the room resembles a Looney Tune.

Despicable Me 4 may not reinvent the wheel (even if it does soup up a wheelchair with monster-truck-sized tyres at one point). What it does deliver is a brisk, fan-friendly romp which may be a little thin on actual plot but is stuffed to the gills with jokes.

The plot can sometimes feel like a chaotic melange stretched too thin, but White, who wrote the Illumination avian charmer Migration, elevates the overall narrative by injecting doses of his perennial interest in the social codes of the rich. The Minions get a zany B plot that becomes one of the film’s strongest threads, and a strong voice cast keeps the film engaging and nimble.

Despicable Me 4 understands its appeal and plays to its strengths. With fun details, vibrant animation, and strong comedic energy, it is a delightful and entertaining addition to the franchise, offering enough laughs and heartwarming moments to satisfy both longtime fans and newcomers alike.

Silliness is on tap for you and your kids with Despicable Me 4, providing good fun for a trip to the theater or on a long road trip.

Despicable Me 4 won't win any prizes, but if you like this kind of thing, you'll like this thing. I laughed. The dumber and more random the jokes, the harder I laughed. The kids I saw it with laughed harder.

Like Maxime’s roach-man, “Despicable Me 4” is a hallucinatorily imaginative yet overstuffed amalgam of unrelated elements.