The Media Tourist

Babbling Minions again make this franchise frolic a river of fun & laughs

Despicable Me 4
Voices by Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig & Will Farrell
Directed by Chris Renaud and Patrick Delange
Rated PG

In theaters Wednesday, June 3

What’s the most successful animated series of all time? Shrek? Toy Story? Frozen? Nope, it’s this kid-centric movie-funhouse franchise frolic about a reformed bumbling supervillain, Gru, and his clattering, chattering yellow-nubbin assistants, the Minions. Its three previous films (and two spinoffs) have topped $4.6 billion at the box office.

The latest installment finds the reemergence of an old grudge between Gru (Steve Carell) and a former rival, Maxime Le Mal (Will Farrell), while the prankish Minions are being groomed to become superhero crime busters. It’s light and lively, infectiously clever and boisterously brisk as the Minions’ slapstick shenanigans continue to steal much of the comedic spotlight—although Carell and Farrell make a superb sparring pair, still smarting over schoolyard slights from their bad-guy academy days in the French Alps at Lycee Pas Bon (translation: Not So Good High School). And Kristen Wiig (as Gru’s wife, Lucy, a former agent herself) gets her own hilarious subterfuge subplot, masquerading in witness protection as a hair stylist who makes a very dissatisfied customer. This time around, Gru’s all about being a daddy to his babbling baby boy, which gives all the far-ranging fun a foundation in his hectic home life, as he’s flummoxed by milk choices at the supermarket and mixes up the diaper bag for his satchel of spy gear.

Jokes abound in the zippy script (co-written by The White Lotus’ Mike White) and the crazily creative visual riffs on everything from James Bond gizmos to Tom Cruise aerial stunts, Austin Powers outlandishness, Transformers, the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car and even Elvis’s Jailhouse Rock, by way of A-Ha. You won’t find many other movies with such an eclectic mix of plot devices and sheer throwaway sidelines gaggery, including a hyper honey badger, Minion-officiated tennis, a giant flying robotic cockroach and a baby billygoat that confuses the command to “sit” with, well, something decidedly messier on the floor.

Listen closely and you’ll also hear the voices of Steve Coogan, Stephen Cobert, Miranda Cosgrove, Joey King and Sofia Vergara coming from other colorful characters of all shapes and sizes. But no one works harder than Pierre Coffin, who provides the jibber-jabber babble of all the Minions. It’s hard not to love this little army of mayhem-making micro sidekicks, and it’s easy to see why—their childlike antics and nonsensical gibberish are the silly source that feeds this franchise’s river of nuttily creative nonsense and makes these Despicable flicks so darn delightful for kids of all ages.

—Neil Pond