Despicable Me 4

Though there are still plenty of fun/gross antics to entertain the wee ones, the supervillain animation franchise finally seems to be running out of original ideas.

The “Despicable Me” franchise has been one of the most consistently entertaining to come out of Hollywood over the past 14 years, now encompassing six films including the two “Minions” spinoffs. The animation is sharp and colorful, the action boingy and delightfully juvenile, and the characters distinctive and memorable.

I don’t believe anyone who’s enjoyed these movies, especially kids, is going to come out of “Despicable Me 4” disappointed. There’s still plenty of fun/gross antics with an emphasis on gastrointestinal humor and keystone cops-style pratfalls and hijinks.

But, I have to admit, I found my eyes glazing over from time to time. There’s a whole lot of “borrowing” in this movie, much of it intentional in-jokes referencing other pop culture movies. But also just some lazy regurgitation of themes and ideas seen within the franchise, and without.

There’ a Terminator-esque lady chasing our family after a bad hairdo; a flying car straight of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; an army of cockroaches inspired by the various insectoid animated movies like “Bugs” and “Ants;” a snotty tween from “Mean Girls;” some snidely preppies from “Caddyshack,” and so on.

The big plot point in this one is that supervillain turned good guy Gru (Steve Carell) is recruited/pressured into breaking into the same school for villains he attended as a kid, which is a Hogwarts-like forbidding castle with all sorts of strange tricks and traps.

Not to mention, the whole Gru shtick with the chrome-domed user of weird science gadgets owes its entire DNA to a combination of James Bond and Mission: Impossible.

Hey, derivative is fine as long as it’s clever. But this time around, I just found myself tired at the attempts at inside baseball humor and cheap “remind ya” references.

The setup is that an old classmate of Gru’s, Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell), vows revenge after he’s captured and put in jail. His desire to be top dog of the villain hierarchy goes so far as turning his own body into a chitinous approximation of a cockroach.

So the head of the Anti-Villain League assigns Gru and his clan to assume false identities in a milquetoast town. If you’ll recall this includes a trio of adopted urchin daughters, wife and fellow superspy Lucy (Kristen Wiig) and also the addition of a baby son, Gru Jr. A running joke is that the tyke can’t stand his old man, though look for things to change as they share more adventures together.

Most of the minions are reassigned to the AVL for the duration, where they undergo all sorts of training and general mayhem. The biggest development is that a quintet of them are given the Captain America Super Soldier treatment and turned into superheroes, the Mega-Minions.

Look for them in their own solo movie coming soon, I’ll wager.

Another notable new character is Poppy Prescott (Joey King), the snotty girl next door at their new home, who soon reveals herself as an aspiring villainess and blackmails Gru into helping her break into his alma mater to kidnap its mascot, thus securing her a place in the school.

While I was not entirely bored at “Despicable Me 4,” it just didn’t have the pizazz and energy of its predecessors. It’s so busy borrowing and pop-culture referencing they forgot to bring anything new or original to the affair. Count me as ready to hit the escape button on this contraption.