My Family from Mayflower; Despicable Me 4

I originally did not plan to watch this movie in theaters, but my partner and I decided to go see a movie and this seemed the most fun. We did not do Twisters because we no longer could get the D-Box moving seats as the new Marvel movie took all the screens for the theater near us. And no, I do not plan to watch Deadpool & Wolverine in theaters; I’ll wait for streaming. This movie was an enjoyable time, start to finish. Is this a must see movie that will change your life? No, but it was never made to be that kind of film. You watch this to turn off your brain and have a good time.

Spoiler time.

Having the main villain be an old nemesis from school, I can dig it. Who could have equal footing against our hero (villain?) other than an equal from his past? Plus, this antagonist has his own group of minions, no not the Minions, but smaller followers who can take a hit…cockroaches. The movie makes them looker cuter than their realistic counterparts–but they’re still cockroaches–they’re still the enemy. Speaking of minions, the Minions in the movie get their own sub-plot. A trio of them stay with the family, but the majority of them have to separate. The ones that stay with the family continue to show us fulfilling their goal of helping Gru. We see them help change the baby’s diaper, put him and his car seat in the car, and saving him from a tennis match. I’m glad the Minions are still there to be the funny cute mascots of the franchise, but still do their actual task. Near the end of the movie when Gru goes to play tennis, you think he’s going to end up making a fool of himself because it’s implied that he’s not that great at the sport. When a Minion comes in right before the game starts to be the ref, they immediately start harassing the terrible neighbor who is mean to Gru. Did we see Gru plan this? No, his minions know what their job are and know how to help him even when he doesn’t ask for it.

Now when he does ask for their help and they mess up during the break-in with Poppy, we see the evil genius at work. Having Gru break into his old school with the baby gear was a nice reminder that he knows what he’s doing; he’s stolen the moon before. Poppy getting added into the group seemed worrisome at first, but her just wanting to be villain felt very on point. When we first meet her, she looks like the character who is about to bully Gru’s oldest daughter at her new school. She’s from a rich family, a cheerleader, and is rude to them from the start. Her ending up blackmailing Gru to help her get into the same school he went to, what a nice twist. Our perception of her being a bad person was correct, but not the kind of “bad” person we assumed. I also liked that all her pink “Barbie” stuff had a “P” for Poppy instead of a “B” for Barbie. One of the best scenes of the movie is the DDR sequence with her and her cat. The animals looked great, resembling Illumination’s other movie, The Secret Life of Pets. No animals other than Poppy’s cat really stuck out, but just overall the animals seemed more alive.

Okay, let’s talk about the rest of the Minions. They’ve grown popular enough to have their own sub-plot in this movie. What’s funny, is that the sub-plot is pretty much just a goof on superheroes. We get five Minions who transform similarly to Captain America, they go inside a machine with super-serum and get separate powers. One grows in size and is super strong, just like Captain America, and another gets a pointy head shaped like the tip of a rocket, with the ability to fly and a cape very similar to Doctor Strange. One gets a slim stretchy body, just like Mr. Fantastic, while another one has a rock like body, very similar to The Thing. Both characters audience members may notice will be coming out next year in a new Marvel Movie. The last Minion gets laser vision, who will remind people of the leader of the X-Men, Wolv–Cyclops. And yes, just to clarify for you nerds out there, the laser vision in the movie resembles more like Superman’s heat vision since there’s a scene where he tries to heat up a mug, while Cyclops “laser” vision is actually kinetic energy. But the way the Minion uses his laser powers resembles the way Cyclops uses it and how he looks, but technically it’s not the same kind of “laser.” I like how they play around with the Mega Minions–yes, their group name is similar to niche favorite villain turned hero Megamind– by doing classic superhero stuff. We see them on top of a roof building, like Batman. They try to stop a burglar who stole someone’s bag, help a window cleaner working on a tall building, save a cat from a tree, and diffuse a bomb. All classic superhero tropes we have seen from comics or shows. The most notable act is when the stretchy Minion stops a runaway train just like Spider-man from Spider-man 2…well kind of. At the end, they do more harm than justice and the civilians end up hating them, saying how they don’t like superheroes; sounding a bit like the real public with their opinions on superhero movies.

Did I have issues with this movie? Not really. Well, okay there is one scene when they switch the stolen carriage to flight mode and drive over the janitor, but when the carriage is flying away you can see a rail at the bottom that connects from left to right that technically should have hit/tripped the janitor as they drove off–but that’s whatever. But, there was a scene where the antagonist has a cane and throws it off-screen but after a second later while he’s still talking, you can hear the cane hit the ground. So there’s some small details that get missed, but they excel at other small details. For instance, they really missed out on sub-plot stories for the daughters. They did have some stuff going on, but they really didn’t have any lessons learned or satisfying conclusions, they were kind of just there. The family member that did get screen time was the new baby, but that was obviously going to happen since he’s the newest character. I don’t mind that the girls were put to the side with smaller roles, but this leads me to speculate what the next movie plot will be. They could end it here, they had a nice ending with Gru getting closure with the antagonist and revisiting older enemies in prison, but I don’t think they will. My guess, they will do one more movie focusing on family. This time, how the adopted girls feel compared to their brother who is blood related to Gru. They can go on a whole emotional journey of loving family no matter where they come from. This can be a nice way to end the story since Gru started out with the adopted girls and can end with closure that he still loves them even though he gets a new child, because to him, they’re all his children.

Who will be the antagonist? Well funny enough, the movie ends with the Minions breaking into the prison to watch Gru perform. There’s a giant hole for everyone to escape. Gru can work with his family and friends to stop them all one last time. Then they can continue with more spin-off movies with Minions or whatever.

Score – 8 out of 10