Despicable Me 4 (2024) review

Threatened by former classmate-turned-evil-cockroach Maxime Le Mal (voiced by Will Ferrell), bad guy-turned-good Gru (Steve Carell) and his family are placed in "witness protection" by the Anti-Villain League and assigned new identities but, as expected, it's only a matter of time before the two characters clash.  As with its predecessors, this is exclusively for the kiddo crowd - who probably get a kick out of watching a few of the Minions transformed into bumbling "superheroes" - because otherwise it's flaky and forgettable: the subplot involving stealing the school mascot (a honey badger named Lenny) from Gru's alma mater doesn't seem like it belongs in there and neither does Gru's wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig) working as a hairdresser ... except to set up a Terminator 2-inspired chase sequence in a grocery store.  It exists solely to pander to its audience and the final scene is a familiar song-and-dance number (the often-used "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears) to appease the TikTokers ... and it raked in over $800m at the box office as a result, which is truly bananas.