Gru - O Maldisposto 4

Too much of a good thing is becoming more of a pressing question in Despicable Me 4, a silly and breezy installment from Illumination Entertainment that passes by with about as much to remember it as a Saturday morning cartoon.

The latest entry in the Despicable Cinematic Universe continues the saga of the once-despicable Gru with the same level of visual invention and endearing characters, with action that strikes a kid-friendly balance between exciting and silly.

There's nothing intrinsically offensive about a film with low stakes, minimal plotting, or even comedy for the blandest sensibilities. But when a film is all of those things, one has to wonder what we're even doing here.

I suppose I should not be trusted on all things Minion-related. Then again, you don't need my opinion here. If you hate the Minions, you'll stay home. If you hate the Minions, and you have kids, you'll have to see their movie anyway - multiple times.

Kids will undoubtedly chuckle at their familiar exploits; the rest will view the film as an excuse to take a nice air-conditioned nap.

Sure it repeats everything it did the last three times, but thanks to Steve Carell's lovable grump of a Gru and those wild and crazy Minions, the random lunacy remains hard to resist.

A tired, disjointed medley of madcap visual gags, the animated film yields roughly as many legitimate laughs as can be counted on a Minion's three-digit hand.

Overall, "Despicable Me 4" has the classic slapstick humor from the minions for younger kids and some jokes for the older folks in the crowd about retirement funds, country clubs and plant-based milk alternatives.

Plays like an assemblage of note cards that have been stapled together in a rough approximation of a screenplay.

"Despicable Me 4" is a hallucinatorily imaginative yet overstuffed amalgam of unrelated elements.

The heart of the Gru-niverse is slapstick and capers, but the balance is all off here. A disappointing script by Mike White and Ken Daurio, who co-wrote the first three entries, goes all-in on lame physical comedy.

Feels like a stack of B-plots stapled together rather than a full story.

It's all very weak sauce.

On their own, all of these stories have something to recommend them, but strung together into the blandest approximation of a single feature with a cohesive narrative, Despicable Me 4 falls agonizingly short.

Despite a few chuckles, some capable voice work and plenty of splashy color, it proves a largely empty and exhausting ride.

[Is] Despicable Me 4 great? No. Not at all. But I did laugh. More importantly, so did all the children. Sometimes that's enough. This is one of those "sometimes."

"Despicable Me 4" won't win any prizes, but if you like this kind of thing, you'll like this thing.

"Despicable Me 4," the latest, messily passable iteration of the deliriously successful franchise that follows the adventures of the reformed supervillain Gru.

Talk about despicable.

The biggest problem with Despicable Me 4 is that it isn't The Mininos Movie 2.