Despicable Me 4

The biggest problem with Despicable Me 4 is that it isn't The Minions Movie 2.

Talk about despicable.

Yet it’s saved by the trademark mischief and exuberance of Illumination, the French animators who are as integral to the franchise as Steve Carell’s vaguely Slavic voice acting.

It’s pure E numbers – 90 minutes of mad animals, disco music, violence and belching – and if a good film can be made of those things, this is what it looks like.

Writers Mike White and Ken Daurio seem to have stitched their screenplay together from various drafts, an unfocused approach exacerbated by disjointed direction from Chris Renaud and Patrick Delage.

“Despicable Me 4,” the latest, messily passable iteration of the deliriously successful franchise that follows the adventures of the reformed supervillain Gru.

betrays some of the inherent exhaustion in any series of this size and longevity, but it also finds ample new avenues of humor and pushes enough familiar buttons to earn its stripes

It expands the saga in ways that ricochet between interesting and uninspired.

The franchise does not particularly need yet another sequel, but the success of the Despicable Me series is most likely not going to stop anytime soon.

Giving the villain in Despicable Me 4 a cockroach fixation is an apt metaphor for the plot, which scatters all over the place like those buggers when the lights click on.