The fourth film in the Despicable Me franchise (seventh if you count the Minion films in the franchise) dropped today. It has been hit and miss for me over the lifetime of the franchise, so I had no idea what this one would be.

After watching Despicable Me 4 this morning, I did not find that this new film did much for me.

The film was not aggressively bad. I just did not find the film very entertaining. The humor fell flat with just a few exceptions. The story was simple and dull. The Minions were a huge distractions as always.

The positives were the voice cast was solid, if not really great. Steve Carell as Gru is clearly comfortable in this role. Kristin Wiig, Will Ferrell, Sofia Vergara, Stephen Colbert, Joey King all did a strong job.

The animation was fine too. It may not have been unbelievable, but it is certainly watchable.

While the young viewers may like this, the film is much lower level entertainment for the young kids. Especially since there is a considerably better animated movie for kids out there, Inside Out 2. Despicable Me 4 has a lot of stupidity to it and you do not have to lower the level of story just to focus on kids.

I did like some of the finale, but it went too long and ended poorly.

There was nothing that was special with this film and was basically the same things we have seen in previous Despicable Me movies. There was nothing new and it felt dull. As I stated, there was not much that I found funny, and the story was everything that we had seen before.

2.6 stars