Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, and Kirsten Wiig feature in the return of Gru and the minions in Despicable Me 4.

at the 2018 postapocalyptic steampunk movie Mortal Engines, two towering, dusty Minion statues are mistaken for American gods at a museum.

Quick facts about Despicable Me 4: What: For the umpteenth time, the lives of his adoptive children are in risk due to a charming supervillain.

Starring are Will Ferrell, Joey King, Kristen Wiig, and Steve Carell.

Most likely to leave you thinking: Your family ought to have watched Inside Out 2 instead.

With the release of our sixth film in the Despicable Me cinematic universe, that insignificant aspect of our dystopian future is starting to seem less absurd.

In the most recent installment, Steve Carell’s character, Gru, a former supervillain, has gone into hiding after facing the wrath of Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell, who has a heavy French accent), an old adversary from his time as a student at an academy for wicked teenagers.

After being forced to move his family from their gothic hideout to the WASP-esque tiny town of Mayflower, the show switches to a loose comic style reminiscent of a fish out of water.

The Simpsons, the first yellow icons of animation, used this setup twice with significantly more success, so it’s excellent for a 20-minute TV show. However, as a 95-minute film, it feels utterly meaningless.

Despicable Me 4 mostly uses the new environment as a pretext to make fun of snobby suburbanites, missing the chance to present a tale about families overcoming unknown terrain and embracing rapid change as a team.

Gru makes an effort to win over his country club neighbors, but he is unsuccessful. Kristen Wiig plays a grossly underqualified Lucy who works for a brief period of time at a posh salon. They hardly get to see their adoptive children because Gru Jr., who is still an infant and a constant source of frustration for Gru, takes center stage.

At least one blackmail subplot keeps the movie interesting, as Gru is blackmailed into robbing his former school by Joey King, an aspirant teenage criminal. If not, you almost feel as though the movie is ticking away until Maxime shows along to break the monotony.

Although these films indulge in kid-friendly fun, their predecessors nevertheless succeeded in focusing on a temporary family coming of age. It’s obvious that this series has devolved into nothing more than spinning its wheels now that that unit is in place.

The lack of any really good gags in the movie doesn’t help either. The animation company Illumination, known for Despicable Me as well as Sing and The Secret Life of Pets, appears to specialize on a humorous style more commonly associated with Gen X Facebook memes.

The movie only tackles outmoded concepts such as credit cards, Karens, kung fu, plant-based milks (quite similar to a particular well-known Pauls commercial), and so on. There are strange allusions to honey badgers and Terminator 2 in the year 2024.

A white woman with sleek black hair in pink is shown a contraption by an animated white male with voluptuous hair and a green blazer.

Considering the sharp current satire of The White Lotus, it’s rather surprising to find Mike White listed as a writer on this movie — that is, until you realize he also co-wrote The Emoji Movie.

Two little, oblong, yellow minions wearing blue overalls and spectacles stand giggling. A vending machine contains a third.

Children will probably still like the movie. In order to prevent Illumination from running out of ideas for merchandise, the Anti-Villain League decides to give the sidekicks superpowers. This brings back the sugar-rush slapstick humor of the Minions in full force.

Watching the Minions cause mayhem on a larger scale produces a few adorable sight gags, which are by far the greatest section of the movie, even though their shtick is growing a bit stale.

Less than a week separates Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4. They are both bland, reheated leftovers, but the latter has already been a movie office blockbuster, and I wouldn’t be shocked if Gru’s most recent film had the same kind of billion-dollar success as his earlier efforts. After all, the locally produced 200% Wolf is the only family film scheduled to hit theaters in August.

A little girl, two minions, and an animated white man with a black mask stand with their hands raised in front of lasers.

Super Mario Bros. and Sing are just two examples of the pre-existing IP that Illumination, like Pixar, is staking its future on. Another hint that they’re “developing a couple of scripts in The Secret Life of Pets world” came from founder and CEO Chris Meledandri.

It’s a tactic to guarantee that the films that today’s kids see will always be passed down from the generation that came before them. They won’t have many original movies from their own upbringing to show when they ultimately become parents.

Although clumsy sequels have appeared in films for as long as there have been motion pictures, they have never been more prevalent. While Despicable Me 4 isn’t a particularly horrible movie and doesn’t truly reinvent the wheel, it does run the risk of collapsing beneath a wave of déjà vu.