Despicable Me 4 by Chris Renaud (2024)
No joke is too obvious, no reference too dated, no story beat too telegraphed, no cliché too… clichéd for the fourth Despicable Me movie. I mean, really: honey badger and Terminator 2 references in this, the Year of our Lord 2024?! And The Incredibles did the baby-beating-up-the-bad-guy gag a hundred times better back in 2004. Given the run of stellar, creative, and affecting animated movies that we’ve had in recent years — a run that includes Inside Out 2, Across the Spider-Verse, and The Mitchells vs. the Machines — I mourn all of the computing cycles that were forced to give their lives for these 95 minutes of utter mediocrity. But given that Despicable Me 4 has already earned almost $600 million to date, it’s all but guaranteed that we’ll get more of the same from the franchise in a few years’ time.
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