Times have changed since the days when Gru was spreading terror on the benches of the High School Not Good, run by the tyrannical Mrs. Uebelschlecht (to be repeated ten times quickly in a high-pitched voice). Today, if he returns there accompanied by Minions in black suits and glasses of the same shade, it is to put an end to the actions of the one who called him “Gruser the loser”, namely Maxime Le Mal, still flanked by the former head of the cheerleaders, Valentina. A high-risk operation: his long-time enemy has mutated to acquire the superpowers of cockroaches. And no prison is capable of holding him for long. To protect his family, Gru, now also the father of a rascal who only seeks to make him angry, must therefore flee under a new identity to the wealthy city of Mayflower, taking with him only three Minions, Phil, Ralph and Ron. The others will work for the Lynx Vigilance Agency, or more precisely, wreak havoc there. Worse: five of them, thanks to a serum “who could make them explode”transform into Mega Minions with superpowers: flying, cutting with a laser eye, stretching infinitely like a giant rubber band, being hard as rock or having Hulk-like strength. Without losing their mischievous spirit for all that.
Plot-wise, this sixth installment of the saga (if we count the two spin-offs dedicated to the Minions) is not the most original. The little geniuses at Illumination studio have above all sought to parody American thrillers and superhero stories by shamelessly diverting the Fantastic Four (the Mega Minions look exactly like them), Batman (and his bat-carriage), Super-Man (a Minion theft), Spider-Man (the legendary stop of a crazy subway) or the X-Men (Laser or Professor Xavier take a beating), but also the Men in Black, Santa Claus, Hogwarts (The Bad High School seems to come straight out of a Harry Potter nightmare) or the world of westerns.
It goes off in all directions, with a demonic little neighbor, a gluttonous mascot, a tennis game to which the Minions apply the rules of football, a lesson in education (“Agnes, your father orders you to lie!”) or imprisonment in a candy dispenser. And that’s exactly why we love it Despicable Me. There is no downtime. When the giant yellow suppositories in overalls are not playing tricks and schoolboy jokes, it is baby Gru who provides the show by ruining his father’s life.
After Vice-Versa 2here is another sequel that honors animated cinema and should delight all families. It’s funny, politically incorrect, irreverent, deliciously revealing of all the wickedness that we could think without ever daring to say it, with an absurd humor that Tex Avery would not deny, full of second degree and ultimately joyfully entertaining. The expressiveness of Gru and his son, the thousand and one cinematographic references and the Minions’ rascals, always looking for a good joke to the detriment of one of their own, do the rest: we can only fall deliciously back into childhood with Despicable Me 4.
