The absolute silence of the kids in the theater at my screening is a harsher critique than any I could pen.

This franchise moves a notch lower with every new film it releases. Gru hasn't been despicable since the original and his minions are now a joke I've heard many times before.

Pointless addition to the series. Should have ended at 3. Villian was nonsense and giving the minions super powers was a random after thought. Shameless cash grab.

There were some funny parts but overally very bland plot. Gru isn't despicable anymore and the antagonist is a joke. Just watch trailers and you won't regret not seeing the lasts.

Watched this with my niece and nephews without being caught up on the rest of the series. In fact, I couldn't have told you beforehand which ones I had seen, but if my watch history is to be trusted, I've only seen the first. Luckily, other than some initial confusion about Gru's affiliation with the AVL, I didn't feel like I was missing anything critical. I went in with basically no expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Unlike Inside Out 2, which I saw last week, there's no real ambition to tell a powerful/poignant story with this one - it's a low brow kids movie through and though. But it's very watchable, with an appropriately brief runtime and some physical/gag-based humor that even worked on a jaded adult like me (the minions doing baby care like a racing pit stop definitely got a chuckle). As far as criticisms go, the kids' plot line felt short changed and the epilogue song/dance party definitely lost me.