by James Coulter
You know how old this movie makes me feel? The original Despicable Me film was released in 2010—one year after I graduated college. This franchise has been around for 14 years with four movies and two spin-off films starring its titular Minion characters.
Let me repeat that last part: the Despicable Me franchise has been around for 14 years. If you were a young kid when the first movie premiered, chances are you’re either starting college or preparing to graduate from it. And the first movie came out one year after I finished college. These movies are old enough to be nostalgic. That makes me feel older!
I say all that because, well, sometimes I wonder if I’m too old to watch or review these types of movies. Despicable Me. Trolls. Paw Patrol. All of these films are evidently made for very young children, not adults like myself. Clearly, I am not the target demographic.
So, sometimes I wonder if deriding these movies as “bad” is just me being a “grumpy old man” who isn’t “hip” with what “kids these days” are into. (Do young people still use words like “hip”? Or is that lingo considered “cringe”? Dang, I’m old!) In other words, do I not like these movies because they’re genuinely bad? Or is it because they weren’t made for me? Honestly, sometimes I feel the answer is the latter.
Sure, I can criticize how these movies have very simple formulaic plots with predictable story beats and trite overused tropes. But, then again, the only reason I can recognize that these plots and tropes are played out is because I’m old enough to have seen them play out in countless movies before. For me, it may be the same old same old, but for the very young children these films are marketed to, it’s probably their first time watching them.
As a young kid, I forced my parents to watch plenty of cheesy kids’ films, either by dragging them to the theaters or making them watch them on VHS on repeat. I’m old enough to have watched the Power Rangers and Pokémon movies…in theaters! I enjoyed watching them, but my folks probably didn’t. And annoyed me when they rolled their eyes at it. They thought those movies were stupid. And I resented them for that because I thought they were peak cinema. (Admittedly, I still think Pokémon: The First Movie was great!)
So, who am I to dismiss movies like Despicable Me 4? Wouldn’t that make me an “out of touch” adult? Clearly, children love the franchise enough for it to have spawned six movies. And the new movie recently broke box office records. After all, it was the highest-grossing film on 4th of July weekend, and both it and Inside Out 2 are the highest-grossing movies of the year. Of the year! Again, who am I to judge that?
And again, the Despicable Me franchise is old enough to be nostalgic. The young kids who watched the first movie are now old enough to graduate high school or even college. Just two years ago, when the second Minions movie premiered, there was a viral trend where groups of teenagers would watch the movie in theaters dressed in their fanciest clothes (and also throw bananas at the movie screen). I don’t know if these kids were doing all that “for the lulz” or if
they had a sincere love for these films to consider them “peak cinema.” Honestly, it would not surprise me if it was genuinely the latter.
So, no. I didn’t care for Despicable Me 4. And I say this as someone who loved the first movie and thought the second movie was pretty good. But even if I don’t like this movie, I genuinely don’t know if I can deride it as bad. It’s not made for me. And chances are, the only people who are watching this movie are the children who love the series or the people who grew up with it and have genuine nostalgic memories of it. It’s for them, not for me. So, I hope they enjoy it.
I write all that to say: I didn’t care for Despicable Me 4 and have nothing else to say about it.
I didn’t care for Despicable Me 4, and I have nothing else to say about it.
