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Despicable Me 4

In Despicable Me 4, Gru, the reformed supervillain, faces a new nemesis named Maxime Le Mal. Mal is bent on revenge after Gru and his minions embarrass and capture him at their school for villains class reunion. Now, Gru’s family, including their mischievous new addition, Gru Jr., must go into the witness protection program in the hopes that the AVL (Anit-Villian League) will be able to stop Mal in time.

Despicable Me 4 Review

The animation is terrific, and the voice actors are worlds better than the material, but what does it matter if the audience doesn’t care about what’s going on? Gru is now a fully realized individual; his children are generally happy and well-adjusted, and everyone’s personal issues have more or less already been dealt with in past films. The only thing left for the series would be to embark on a simple and straightforward action flick with identifiable stakes that challenge its cast of lovable characters and grip audiences.

Unfortunately, easily the weakest entry in the franchise, Despicable Me 4 lacks the focus of the others as much as the heart. Instead of lasering in on a single story, it meanders from one uninspired and disconnected slapstick subplot to the next, waiting to finally kick in its underwhelming main plot until an hour into its hour-and-a-half runtime. By then, there’s too little reason to care.

Young children will likely enjoy the film for its juvenile and obvious gags, but parents who snore may want to nap before watching. Better yet, ditch the kiddos and go watch Thelma.

Despicable Me 4 INAPPROPRIATE ELEMENTS

Dookie

• There’s a pet goat that we see poop on the floor as a gag.

Oh God

• It’s difficult to tell, but Gru may say “oh God” once,

Dial M for Murder

• There is a brief, intense scene in which the villain attempts to murder Gru, and it is not cartoonish in any way.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Keep Looking

• Nothing that I saw.

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Inside Out 2

It’s been a year since Riley and her family relocated to San Francisco from Minnesota, and in that time, she’s made a new life for herself. She has great friends and an even better sense of self. That is, until the Puberty Alarm sounds, and her new life gets turned upside down and inside out (get it).

Inside Out 2 Review

The first Inside Out was a touching story about the interconnectivity of emotions and how each plays an important role in shaping us as we grow. Inside Out 2 is a slightly less touching story about the interconnectivity of emotions and how each plays an important role in shaping us as we grow.

Unlike the previous installment, which mostly centered on the adventures of Joy, Sadness, and eventually the lovable Bing Bong, Inside Out 2 is a little less focused. Suffering a bit from sequelitis, it tries too hard to be more than its predecessor rather than less derivative of it. It’s a bigger and louder variation on a theme that spends much more time on Riley’s exterior story and features a significantly larger cast both inside and outside the 13-year-old.

Remember in the first movie, how there were several instances in which it looked as though Joy and Sadness would be able to MacGuffin their way back to headquarters only to be thwarted by a new obstacle? There was one moment when a vacuum tube leading back home suddenly appeared, but it wasn’t sufficient to carry Joy and Sadness back, so Sadness got left behind. However, the tube ended up failing due to a chain of events set into motion several scenes prior. This thoughtful, organic storytelling made the characters’ hard-fought accomplishments that much sweeter. Sadly, like many sequels, Inside Out 2’s interior story is far less compelling than the original. Joy, Sadness, Anger, and Disgust quickly travel from one set piece to the next, easily overcoming each obstacle in time to more or less convenience themselves to the next one.

Another major shift is that of its tone. IO1 ran the main characters and the audience through a gamut of emotions, tackling a number of universally identifiable themes with a musical-like rhythm that carried both through the film’s highs and lows. Riley is no less sympathetic in this sequel than she was in the first, but with anxiety, both the character voiced by Maya Hawke and the feeling, as the driving emotion for most of its runtime, older audiences end up reliving their own anxiety from similar past experiences while younger viewers cringe at their present reality. The result for moviegoers is nearly an hour and a half of feeling anxious, which many audience members might not find particularly pleasant (at least, not the sane ones).

However, as unpleasant as experiencing these uncomfortable moments once again might be, it’s also what gives the movie its greatest asset: heart/actual nostalgia of real life (as opposed to childhood movie member-berries). Despite its lack of originality, Inside Out 2 is an entertaining and mostly satisfying family pic. The performances are fairly strong, even if the material they are working with is somewhat lacking, and some of the original cast didn’t return. Furthermore, what it gets right, it gets really right, and the emotional payoff should be satisfying enough to leave you in a good place by the time the credits roll.

Inside Out 2 INAPPROPRIATE ELEMENTS

It’s Not For Itty Bitties

• Inside Out 2 is rated PG, and that’s appropriate. While it offers no major infractions like curse words, etc., it is pretty emotionally intense. More than that, though, it’s emotionally over the heads of very young children and doesn’t offer enough silly fun to make up for it. I think they’d just be bored.

Locker Room

• There’s a very brief moment in the high school girl’s locker room in which one teen girl isn’t fully clothed. She’s not naked by any means and not even in her underwear. Instead, she’s in a state of mid-dress with hockey pants and an undershirt on. It’s less about anything being shown than it is that it’s evocative of what was happening in the locker room moments before. Since it wasn’t needed, it should have been omitted.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Restraint? From Disney?

• Nearly all of Riley’s story occurs at a girls’ high school hockey camp, and even though you can practically feel the reins that someone put on the filmmakers, no one is openly gay or gender non-conforming, etc. No flags or other coded messages were secreted away for the casual viewer to notice (I say that because the world is changing so quickly, I may have missed something new or something very, very small).
  • I say that you can practically feel it because all of the veteran high school players act indistinguishably from boys in their brief and infrequent time spent as more than digital extras. Furthermore, all but one of them have butch haircuts. There’s simply nothing feminine about them at all.

I Say, “Di.” You Say “Versity.”

• Even in urban areas, hockey is a sport played almost exclusively by white people, but you wouldn’t know it by watching this movie. Almost none of the team is unambiguously caucasian. Even Riley’s BFFs had their races algorithmically chosen to be as inoffensive (i.e., not white) as possible.

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Mr. Birchum (Season 1)

Mr. Birchum is a no-nonsense remedial high school Woodshop teacher from a saner time. With no patience for woke BS and no filter, he lets you, his students, and anyone else in earshot know exactly what he thinks about pronouns and what you can do with them.

Mr. Birchum Review (E1: Welcome Back, Birchum!)

The single most important question about any comedy is, is it funny? If so, virtually, all a show’s weaknesses can be forgiven. Thankfully, Mr. Burchum is, and its weaknesses are few.

Sure, the pilot episode hasn’t quite found the series’ rhythm, resulting in some uneven pacing, and some secondary characters don’t yet smoothly fit into place, but this is pretty standard for programs such as this. Besides, the show offers more than enough laugh-out-loud moments to make up for these early growing pains.

Adam Carolla voices the titular character, and while there’s a reason The Aceman never graduated to Hollywood A-lister, his comfort with the material mellows his usual presentation-style performance, as Birchum basically espouses shortened versions of Carolla’s signature rants. Further aided by his always excellent comedic timing and, most importantly, his hilarious lampooning of the world around us, his minor warts as a performer can be easily forgiven.

The rest of the star-studded voice cast is perfectly adequate, and with talents like Rosanne Barr and Jay Mohr (just to name a few) on board, they will almost certainly continue to gel as the season fully finds its voice. However, there is one among the cast who shines like a rainbow sun in unicorn heaven. Stand-up comedian Tyler Fischer plays Mr. Karponzi, an avatar for every radical progressive nutbar idea floating around the current cultural toilet bowl.

Fischer, who I’m almost ashamed to say didn’t appear on my radar until I reviewed another Daily Wire original—Lady Ballers—is a superstar waiting in the wings. His pitch-perfect delivery of the archetypal man bun-wearing gender catchphrase Libs of TikTok-horror show of an educator is the very definition of side-splitting, and his is hands-down the best performance on the show.

Overall, the inaugural episode of Mr. Birchum is generally well done. While not groundbreaking, its animation is simple and clean, stylistically falling somewhere between Big City Greens and The Simpsons with hints of King of The Hill. This first episode’s writing is a little uneven, with many situations feeling forced around Carolla’s irritated soliloquies rather than occurring organically throughout, but the groundwork for something special has clearly been laid. When all is said and done, Adam Carolla and The Daily Wire have a clear path ahead for growing Mr. Birchum into a classic adult cartoon series.

WOKE ELEMENTS

How ‘Bout No?

• What’s more no than no? Double no? Dr. No?

Mr. Birchum (E2: Thank You for Your Meal Service)

On Veteran’s Day, Mr. Birchum and his ex-Navy pals bar/restaurant hop, taking advantage of the free food and booze being served to those who served, only to be ambushed by a group of retired Army grunts on the same mission.

Unfortunately, episode two of Mr. Birchum was a bit of a disappointment. Many of the jokes landed with a thud, being inartfully telegraphed and feeling artificially set up and gracelessly knocked down.

Thank You for Your Meal Service also shows some unfortunate cracks that may need more than spackled to fix. Many are aware of the recent controversy surrounding Candace Owens‘ less-than-amicable split from The Daily Wire. Owens, once a rising conservative star for the network, was originally slated to lend her vocal talents to Mr. Birchum, only to be replaced at the bottom of the 9th by former ESPN anchor Sage Steele. Unfortunately, the scenes between Megyn Kelley’s Mrs. Birchum and Steele’s Deena were as poorly performed as they were written. With woodenly exposited dialogue that reads like recycled Twitter/X talking points, the two shared no chemistry and exhibited less range. Moreover, their B-plot didn’t enhance the episode’s primary arc and felt tacked on.

Kelly’s Birchum continues to not quite gel with the program. She’s an Obama-voting universal healthcare proponent with all of the “white guilt” in which liberal suburbanite women love to wallow, but she’s neither Mr. Birchum’s enemy nor ally and instead seems nearly completely independent from the main action, as though a competing program has been inter-spliced into this one.

It’s still early in the show’s run, and there’s more than enough talent behind the program to carry the season and series, but hopefully, they quickly figure out the winning formula.

WOKE ELEMENTS

In The Navy

• This episode introduces Mr. Birchum’s gay ex-Navy buddy. It’s mostly for laughs, as Mr. Birchum jokes about him being the “kind of “gay that is okay” because he served during the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era.

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