Despicable Me 4 forgets that Minions are a delicious condiment and not a main dish

There is a special Minion gag in Despicable Me 4 that I keep thinking about. It’s so simple, but every time I think about it, I have to smile. Basically, one of Gru’s Minions gets stuck in a vending machine and doesn’t know how to get out. Throughout the whole movie. So he’s just constantly in the background, whatever else is going on, sleeping on stacks of chips or reading a book called The vending machine dietThere are more shenanigans going on on the screen, but he is stuck behind the glass.

It’s hilarious, but it made me realize that although the scenes with the Minions often degenerate into annoying gibberish, it Is a correct way to use them, an ideal amount of Minion gags to sprinkle between other scenes – a golden ratio. The Minions were only a small part of the original 2010 Despicable Mebut they have now overshadowed former villain Gru and his family in the larger cultural landscape. But putting them at the center is to overlook what the Minions do best.

The Despicable Me films work best on both a story and comedy level when the filmmakers use the Minions sparingly and do not overload the scenes with them. Although the vending machine gag is one of the best business ideas in Despicable Me 4It’s not the only Minion gag in the film. Quite the opposite.

Image: Lighting

The messy yellow guys are polarizing. Some people love them so much they buy limited-edition Minion crocodiles, build elaborate meme pages around them, or spend a lot of time wondering what Minions taste like. Other people hate them with all their heart, a rage that makes them reject every single project in the Despicable Me series. I used to count myself in the latter camp, but thanks to a long-standing inside joke with a friend, I’ve developed a begrudging fondness for the bespectacled beans. Still, they’re never my favorite part of the Despicable Me films, which are more engaging and creative when they embrace wacky world-building around theatrical villainy as their primary preoccupation.

This background gag really emphasized how funny the Minions can be when they’re not the focus of a scene. And I laughed out loud when Gru used his little henchmen as a baby pit crew and immediately ran to change Gru Jr.’s diapers like they were changing the tires on a race car. These jokes work because they run in the background of larger scenes and enhance the other funny antics, adding yet another layer of silliness to an already off-kilter world.

Scenes that are Minions and only Minions? There isn’t enough contrast between the silly blobs and other more grounded (but certainly still quirky) characters. All the Minions scenes are a bad feedback loop, reminiscent of the time when They combine two apps for voice amplification and they turn a simple statement into a shrill cacophony. Minions just aren’t nuanced or varied enough to carry a scene when they’re the only things in it.

Image: Lighting

A typical example: In Despicable Me 4all Minions who are not Trapped in vending machines or serving as Gru’s pit stop crew, they ride the bus to the headquarters of the Anti-Villain League, the secret service where Gru (Steve Carell) and his wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig) work. They are terrible bus drivers, blow bubbles, throw a party, and annoy the bus driver, who stands up and tries to put them in their place. But the sheer mass of Minions quickly overwhelms him, literally charging toward the building in a wave. It’s a long scene where all the Minions merge into one mindless, nonsense-spewing unit. The film crew tries so hard to make this idea weird and lively, but because any sense of character or specialness is lost, the film ends up being just boring. There’s nothing unexpected or interesting about the Minions literally merging into one big yellow blur.

Scenes like this have given the Minions their worst reputation. It doesn’t help that there are two spinoff films centered around the Minions, based largely on interactions between the Minions. After the 30th interaction based on their high-pitched voices, their gleeful cruelty to each other, and their over-the-top ruthlessness, it’s hard to remember that they can actually be engaging and surprising when you allow them personalities or when you use them to make the main characters stand out rather than being an endlessly repetitive side story. Like any kind of particularly strong artificial seasoning, Minions can add some much-needed spice to an otherwise boring movie scene. But relying too heavily on the Minions will overwhelm even a decent movie with their saccharine flavor. Considering how often the Minions oversaturate the Despicable Me movies, it’s very easy to forget what a good, low dose of Minion antics can do for the soul.

Despicable Me 4 is now in theaters.