Despicable Me 4 is Boring: Let the Despicable Me Girls Grow Up

not exactly a secret that I have never been a massive illumination fan but I have gotten softer on them lately mostly because there are more important things in the world to be mad at even if illumination is the result of some of those things but also because recently I have been enjoying a number of Illumination films at least more than usual Mario was not a masterpiece but it was solid I did like migration and even as someone who's never been partial to Despicable Me franchise minions too was legitimately good so I was prepared to give up on any examination of narrative standards and just focus on the funny gags and pleasing animation and then despicable me4 made all those old anti- illumination TI raides come up again not because it's anywhere close to being worst film of the Year territory it does have its funny gags and moments cuz everything has moments but not enough to overcome the immense feeling of boredom that crept in during this film that I haven't felt since secret life of pets 2 and I amount this mostly to Despicable Me for being a movie where both too much happen and nothing happens and by that I mean there is a weirdly large amount of character subplots to touch on while virtually nothing happens in any of them starting with grw taking on one of his former classmates who vows revenge and breaks out so his family has to go into witness protection so for at least the first half an hour though longer is just them adjusting to their new lives and almost everybody has their own scene that will not have anything of considerable narrative consequence in the Final Act they are literally just scenes that happen to happen mostly there's Gru trying to bond with his son while also trying to bond with the neighbors eventually getting blackmailed by the neighbor's daughter there's Margot at school there's Agnes and Edith at karate class there's Lucy as a hairdresser while also cutting back to the original villain and we also have the minions at the AVL and the mega Minions that is a lot of subplots that I can barely call subplots and only one of those various subplots is actual plot that actually has consequences in terms of what's going to happen in the finale or two of them are giving the impression that the plot is barely ever moving this was a watch checking film and believe it or not I have adjusted to illumination fun first strategy which I have no problems with as long as it actually delivers fun the problem is is that there was plenty of amusing Standalone Clips but very few of those clips were amusing enough to justify the percentage of total screen time they were utilizing and otherwise I wouldn't be surprised illumination scripts have never drastically impressed me it's just that I thought they were starting to get better at this like I said I liked migration and migration was written by this movie's writer Mike White the guy who wrote School of Rock but then again he also wrote um the Emoji Movie and I got to be honest Emoji movie was more narratively compelling than this and then the other writer was an illumination regular who I guess is largely responsible for a lot of my complaints but migration ultimately worked because even though it was also a way less plot driven and a more gag oriented script there was only one plot that we were following only one story not cutting back and forth between seven but the truth is the one aspect of this movie that actually got my brain turning was that before it there was an interview with the film's director that talked about how the girls were never going to grow up that their ages would be frozen in time like The Simpsons which I found incredibly disappointing because believe it or not one of the first things I ever thought when I saw the first Despicable Me especially when it came to Edith who had some of the more rebellious Tendencies what would happen if she decided she wanted to become a super villain and how would grw react to that but more importantly you know why the Simpsons kids work because they are just as much funny characters as the adults are the Despicable kids are not the Simpson kids they are nowhere close they are just not interesting or rather they potentially could be interesting if you gave them anything interesting to do and they just historically have not their subplots in both of the former movies I just considered complete washes it really just feels like the movie goes back to these characters to pretty much remind the audience that they exist because family man is the main Crux of Gru's new identity now now okay that is of course a very subjective judgment for all I know the Despicable Me fans love these girls for some reason and I do genuinely get trying to keep the script loose so that the animators can have as much fun as they want but that's the question are the animators having fun with these characters I mean I don't want to presume but it doesn't seem like it is Agnes's cute Factor really just that important to the franchise's identity somehow in a way where the minions don't already qualify for that and this was on my mind because I know that when I talked about minions too last year one of the reasons why I thought that it worked was because the girls weren't there we didn't have to waste time cutting back to them or need to amend the story to accommodate their existence and even as I say this keep in mind that even though this is the train of thought I'm sticking with no I am not saying that the girls are the reason why this movie is underwhelming way more blame should be put on the pacing the weak premise and the villain being particularly boring in fact Agnes and Edith have a pretty fun scene in karate but again that scene didn't really go anywhere and was it worth it for the drag of the plots momentum to put it there and that's not even accounting for the Superfluous goat scene and the minute of Lucy hating the name blanch just all seemed like wow we could have we could have used that time to do literally anything else and believe me you guys know that I am not one to tell a movie to just throw away their female characters I prefer them to utilize their female characters to actually do something compelling in interesting and these characters just haven't been since the movies where they were properly introduced they could be interesting they just haven't been either because the writer or the directors are not particularly incentivized or have any ideas of what to do with them and then suddenly this movie drops and the reception is pretty middling and then shock of all shocks the same director then suddenly walks back the statements of the previous claim saying that they are at least open to the idea of Aging up the kids in the future again open to not saying they will but that's something and yeah by by the way looking forward to all the comments uh telling me about the second interview because they didn't trust that I was going to get to it which actually uh is understandable I've made some research flubs in the past Inside Out 2 and Elio had their dates switched no they didn't I got that wrong in fact the director's statements actually specified the possibility of RW Jr and Edith potentially becoming villains maybe because realizing that sure narrative continuity might be annoying to deal with but at the same time is it needing to reset everything to a status quo ALS Al a narrative restriction and then considering pretty much what they do in this movie is instead of with his own daughter instead greu reluctantly takes on a villainous Protege under the thread of blackmail and it is easily the most interesting part of the film I actually really like poppy or at least I eventually did I really liked her story because things actually happened in her subplot but I also understand why they didn't do that sure grw has the excuse to do so under the threat of blackmail but he would be a bad influence if he couraged his own kid toward any villainous Tendencies sure Edith herself may not be above some form of blackmail but that would show a child effectively blackmailing her own parent something tells me the parents would not be a fan of a movie encouraging that but still it is heavily irksome that Gru seems to now have this closer bond with poppy than he does with his own kids except of course the baby that he was bonded with having inherited his despicable Tendencies but is another reason why the movie just isn't hitting the way that some of the others are because the other reason why minions 2 really work is because of his emotional Arc with wild Knuckles really landed and that honestly is what worked about the first movie is that he always has an emotional Arc with another character though I don't know how many people really cared about his brother but this time it was trying to bond with his baby and that just didn't hit because it was more of an ongoing gag than a plot you know the two don't exactly have a great communicative Rapport pretty much just there for a semi- emotional top off for the finale and that's it it's not exactly a plot also that a minions 2 grew is actually able to be a villain that was another reason why it was so fun I mean guys at this point just abandon this timeline and dedicate yourself to the minions before Universe which yes by the way the minions are also spoofing superheroes in this movie doesn't really matter they're minions they're doing their minion stuff almost completely disconnected from the rest of the story as per usual of course I am neither particularly pleased nor disappointed in this yeah that's easily where the gags were the funniest but then again as I've said I am not a fan of this franchise and if the girls just standing around for a collective for minute just being mildly cute is working for its target audience what do I know because yeah as expected the movie did do good this weekend of course it did but remember the very first weekend is a sign of hype not necessarily quality and this movie's hype was largely based off of the momentum of how much people liked the previous despicable franchise but this one has been getting very mediocre responses meaning that the next despicable movie is not going to do as well as this one and also very likely that its second weekend is going to have maybe a slightly B bigger drop off than they're used to having like it does show that the franchise still has steam but it is definitely winding down almost as if it needs a burst of fresh energy maybe in the form of a Time skip because Edith wanting to be a villain is genuinely an interesting character-based conflict of grw struggling between wanting to be a good role model while also wanting to bond with his daughter while indulging in his pastimes it could really say something about parents who sometimes might deliberately pass down what they know are bad habits just for the sake of bonding with their child but wait that sounds too much like it's mildly challenging and interesting and dende knows illumination can never be that fun only and believe me I get the monetary value of being a safe familyfriendly brand with all the competition and the floundering box office but I can still be disappointed about it and even if that doesn't work the bigger reason why they should absolutely allow the girls to grow up is because if you should just say fast forward like oh 10 to 12 years uh then you can send them out to college and you don't have to deal with them in the plot anymore again I would prefer you find a way to use these characters to be interesting than that but if you literally just can't that would be preferable to more of this but you also have an easy way around that just have Gru teach the girls villain stuff so that they can be double agents like him then they have an excuse to do the villain stuff under the premise that he's still teaching them useful skills after all parents should encourage hobbies in practices 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Channel: CellSpex

Views: 142,428

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Id: s8T6zHBinWE

Length: 12min 42sec (762 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 09 2024