Things Only Adults Notice In Despicable Me 4

Gru and his Minions are back for yet another colorful, kid friendly adventure in "Despicable Me 4." The family comedy features the returning voice talents of "The Office" star Steve Carell, legendary "Saturday Night Live" alum Kristen Wiig, and teen Nickelodeon star Miranda Cosgrove, as well as franchise newcomers Will Ferrell, Sofia Vergara, Stephen Colbert, and Joey King. Looking at the cast of talented comedic actors, a parent might feel a bit of hope that this entry in the franchise might have a little more to offer them specifically than those that came before.

While we gave "Despicable Me 4" a fairly mixed-to-positive review and have even listed it among the best animated movies of the year so far, what's here for adults is a bit subtler than you might expect. Fortunately, we're here to find all the jokes, plot points, and themes that the filmmakers slipped in just to keep the old folks engaged.

"Despicable Me 4" begins tipping its hat to older audience members almost immediately with the introduction of Felonius Gru's (Steve Carell) classic (and inescapable) henchmen, the Minions (Pierre Coffin). After a stylish car sequence set to Pharell's infectious new song "Double Life," Gru and the Minions arrive at the supervillain academy Lycée Pas Bon. The small yellow buffoons exit a tiny car in their normal overalls — but quickly ditch them for black suits and ties, with black shades to complete the look.

On the surface, the moment plays at the Minions donning more appropriate attire for the black-tie event. More likely, however, this is the animation team acknowledging the TikTok hashtag #GentleMinions, a viral trend where young people wore suits and sunglasses to watch "Minions: The Rise of Gru" (which itself had plenty of adult jokes and themes). Though most TikTokers filming themselves participating appeared to merely enjoy the movie, there were even reports of theaters in the U.K. banning large groups in formal wear out of fear of disruptions.

Regardless, "Minions: The Rise of Gru" was a box office success, much in the same way "Despicable Me 4" has proven to be so far. Both arguably have the #GentleMinions fanbase to thank, at least in small part, for the films' viral successes.

The reason for Gru and his Minions descending on Lycée Pas Bon (which translates to "Not Good High School") is a class reunion, where Gru is forced to go undercover to capture his bitter childhood rival Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell). Before the frenemies come to blows, however, Maxime takes delight in humiliating Gru by mocking him with how little villainy he's accomplished since they graduated in the same year. He even gets the room to howl with laughter at the moon, which Gru briefly stole then lost during the original "Despicable Me" film in 2010.

While most "Despicable Me 4" audience members will have yet to graduate elementary school, their parents probably have graduated high school or even college and are likely no strangers to how torturous class reunions can be. The film is almost painfully accurate in its depiction of how alumni will posture with one another over relatively meaningless events from a decade or more in the past. Fortunately for Gru, he doesn't have to endure this ritual humiliation for long and instead gets to lead the Anti-Villain League to battle against Maxime. And if parents are being honest with themselves, there's a small part of them that wishes they could arrest their high school bully in front of the entire student body.

Another aspect of "Despicable Me 4" that will hit too close to home for some parents is Gru's frigid relationship with his newborn son, Gru Jr. Though the infant clearly loves his mother, Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig), he meets his dad's affections with disdain or outright hostility. While father and son are waiting in a car pool line, Gru Jr. even begins to actively antagonize Gru Sr. by maliciously popping balloons in the back seat of the car.

Hopefully, no adult in the audience is dealing with a child as despicable as Gru Jr. (though if they are, a "Despicable Me" movie is probably the perfect way to keep them busy for an hour or so). At the same time, it's not uncommon for parents to have anxiety about being unable to connect with their children, especially if they aren't the birthing parent. This is actually a rather natural extension of the original movie's central themes, as a similar anxiety can crop up for parents who have recently adopted children (as Gru has in "Despicable Me").

Admittedly, "Despicable Me 4" doesn't really offer any meaningful insight into this dynamic — unless a parent can plausibly imagine their newborn turning into a cockroach that won't love them unless they're dangling from a skyscraper. Otherwise, parents can at least take comfort that plenty of other parents feel the exact same way.

One of the most famous instances of a children's animated film hiding an adult joke in plain sight occurred in the 2005 movie "Madagascar," in which the lost zebra Marty (Chris Rock) screams the phrase "Sugar Honey Iced Tea!" in extremely slow motion. While most of the young audience members have worked out the phrase's not-so-secret meaning in the several years since they saw it, animation studios are still finding new ways to shock adult audiences by covertly dropping the word.

In the crassest joke "Despicable Me 4" has to offer, young Agnes is trying to show off the tricks and commands she's taught the family goat, Lucky. But when she tells the goat to "sit," it defecates on the floor, causing her to laugh and emphasize that she had told the goat to "sit." The way the line is delivered implies that the goat instead heard ... well, "Sugar Honey Iced Tea" instead (which itself implies that Agnes has a rather startling command to get the goat to go to the bathroom). The joke is almost definitely going to go over the heads of kids watching the movie, though it might be the last time adults jolt awake during the 90-minute feature.

Early in the film, Gru returns home to his family, now living happily and normally as law-abiding citizens. To showcase this newfound domesticity, Gru is now doing all the family's grocery shopping — though not without significant difficulty, apparently. When Lucy asks if he remembered to pick up milk from the store as well, he lists off every kind of non-milk one might find in a supermarket from oat to almond, then admits that he doesn't think they make regular milk any more.

Though it isn't as "adult" of a joke as Lucky pooping on the floor, a joke about the lack of "regular milk" being sold isn't likely to land with toddlers whose milk experience consists of regular and chocolate. And if we're being honest, the framing of the observation — that these "fake milks" are phasing out the real thing — makes it seem as though this joke was exclusively meant for the sort of audience member that takes offense at the word "boomer."

As a comedic actor, Steve Carell has proven that he can sell almost any joke, no matter how thin or low-brow. This appears to still be true, as the former star of "The Office" nails what would otherwise be a groan-worthy joke that kids wouldn't even register.

While feeding Gru Jr. one of the squeezy applesauce packages that parents and cash-strapped college students alike rely on, he notes that it's "from the Bahamas — all of them!" The joke going over kids' heads here is that there aren't multiple "Bahamas" as Gru implies — there are over 3,000 islands that comprise the country, but the term "the Bahamas" is grammatically correct when used with both plural and singular verbs. For example, it's totally fine to say "the Bahamas are beautiful," but you would be referring to the group of islands generally referred to as such. However, you could also say "the Bahamas is beautiful," and be referring specifically to the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, a singular country.

"Despicable Me 4" presents the somewhat unexpected reunion of your dad's favorite comedians, Steve Carell and Will Ferrell. It's a fun bit of meta casting that plays off a fan-favorite on-and-off-screen dynamic that began with the 2004 Adam McKay comedy "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy." In one of the roles that shot him to national stardom, Ferrell played the titular weatherman, while Carell — still a year away from "The Office" taking off — played his colleague Brick Tamland.

The pair also featured together in Nora Ephron's ill-fated "Bewitched" film adaptation soon after, as well as the Woody Allen comedy "Melinda and Melinda." After that point, Carell got busy working in Dunder Mifflin while Ferrell and McKay went on to dominate the comedy genre (at least until McKay decided to move away from comedy and tap a post-"The Office" Carell for multiple films instead, but that's a whole other story). But when Carell was preparing to leave the NBC sitcom several years later, Ferrell was brought aboard to serve as his temporary replacement, seemingly as a move to win over fans nervous about his exit (again, another story). The two then reunited one last time before "Despicable Me 4" for "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues." All this being said, to the young ones the movie is meant for, Carell and Ferrell are just the ridiculous voices behind the colorful characters in front of them. To adults, they're comedy legends finally getting to share the screen again.

As the AVL takes the family into hiding so that they can avoid the wrath of Maxime long enough for him to be stopped once more, the children are understandably concerned that they won't be able to have contact with their Grandma (Julie Andrews' Marlena Gru) and "Uncle Dru" Gru, the blonde twin Carell voices in "Despicable Me 3." Neither of them appear in the film, as Silas Ramsbottom (Steve Coogan) explains that their protective arrangement must be kept separate from the Gru-Wilde brood. Upon hearing that he will be separated from his family by a literal military, Gru gets excited and refers to this as a "silver lining" of their own protective arrangement.

For kids seeing the film, it might be hard to understand why Gru is excited about this. Marlena and Dru have both been antagonists in the series, but most children's films maintain that family members are supposed to be loved and protected no matter what. Adults, however, will empathize with the reality that, sometimes, you just need some space from your annoying relatives.

It's impossible for Steve Carell to escape Michael Scott — if he even wants to, that is. The role that made him a household name and one of the most beloved comedic actors of all time. "Despicable Me 3" even merged a little with the world of "The Office," with Gru's birthday party being attended by office workers that looked suspiciously like former Dunder Mifflin employees, including Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner), Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), and Holly Flax (Amy Ryan). There's even one that looks like Erin Hannon (Ellie Kemper), complete with a fun-but-wasteful disposable camera.

"Despicable Me 4" has a similarly low-key nod to "The Office," with Silas casting Carell's Gru as a salesman while he's in hiding. Except instead of selling paper, Gru is supposedly selling solar panels. And when Gru first gets this new biography, he's standing in front of a computer with a screensaver of a bouncing, multi-colored logo — not unlike the one seen in classic cold opening of "The Office" Season 4, Episode 5, "Launch Party." The sight gag is likely to go over the heads of most kids and those who haven't seen the series — and might even escape a few superfans as well.

With their move to the terrifyingly affluent town of Mayflower, Gru and his family are forced to give their identities a complete makeover. For everyone else, this just means a new name and a new job or school. But for Gru — who has spent his life building his style around garishly branded pieces of clothing — this means he needs an entirely new wardrobe. To his credit, the supervillain fully embraces his new dadwear, sporting a bright pastel polo with a curious turtle logo on the breast. While kids won't notice too much about it, adults will surely chuckle at the nod toward classic preppy polo brands like Vineyard Vines (which instead bears the logo of a whale).

At the same time, they'll also commiserate with Gru's attempts to make adult friends by adopting the sort of cul-de-sac hobbies their next door neighbors the Prescotts enjoy. For example, Gru tries without much success to play tennis with family patriarch Perry (Stephen Colbert). It's the same sort of timeless suburban assimilation nightmare that movies and shows have been portraying for decades, though one that gets no less relevant as the years go on.

While the goat poop joke might be the film's most outwardly inappropriate joke, there is one other contender — but its dirtiness depends whether or not the film actually meant for a Minions sight gag to come across in the way it did.

While Gru and his family are taken to Mayflower, the Minions are taken into the custody of the AVL, where they are essentially set loose to cause mayhem on another level entirely. As this is going on, one of the Minions briefly takes possession of some X-ray goggles, which they then use to scan the room. Though they mostly see Minion skeletons, they do linger on one Minion who has a banana in their crotch area. Any adult with their mind in the gutter (read: most of them) is going to see the placement of this phallic fruit and make the obvious assumption: the sight gag is a Minions d*** joke.

However, to give Illumination some plausible deniability, it could just as easily be implying that the Minion recently ate a banana, which is indeed their favorite food. Even so, it probably would've been a good idea to place it a little higher inside them to avoid anatomical confusion.

While traipsing around his backyard in an incriminating monogrammed nightshirt (should've kept with the turtles, Gru!), Gru is caught by Poppy Prescott (Joey King), Perry's precocious daughter who just so happens to have aspirations of villainy. Unfortunately for Gru, this makes it fairly easy for her to connect the dots that this suburban interloper is actually a world-famous criminal mastermind — as well as an alumni of her dream school, Lycée Pas Bon.

When she subsequently ropes Gru into a heist, they meet at Poppy's treehouse, where she has conspicuously installed a full "Dance Dance Revolution" machine for her and her cat to play. Aside from the fact that most kids these days are playing "Just Dance" instead of "DDR," young fans probably aren't aware that this is a meta gag about the actor who plays Poppy — Joey King is the star of the cult Netflix young adult series "The Kissing Booth." In those films, King's character is obsessed with playing "DDR."

Not to make any of our readers feel old or anything, but it's likely that most kids today know Spider-Man as Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), thanks to the triumphant "Spider-Verse" series. But while "Despicable Me 4" does seem to stay current among kids by taking a superhero angle with its Mega Minions storyline (in which four of the Minions are given super powers), one of the only comic book movie references is geared not toward an audience of "Spider-Verse" or Tom Holland fans or even the much older Andrew Garfield-loving crowd, but to audience members who have seen Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man 2" (a film so old it can vote and drink in most countries).

During their catastrophic attempt to use their powers for good, one of the Mega Minions uses their stretching powers to stop an out of control train. Visually, the animators are clearly quoting the iconic train rescue-slash-brawl from "Spider-Man 2," in which Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man uses his webs in the same way the Minion uses their elastic arms. Even if "Spider-Man 2" is so culturally ubiquitous and accessible across multiple generations of Spidey, it just seems unlikely that anyone in the target audience of "Despicable Me 4" would be enough of a fan to appreciate the homage.

The last thing adults caught while watching "Despicable Me 4" probably had a profound effect on their post-movie activities. While waiting for Perry and Gru to wrap up their climatic tennis match, Lucy is forced to have a tense lunch with Perry's wife, Patsy Prescott (Chloe Fineman). When their meal abruptly ends because of Maxime's intervention, Lucy downs not only her drink, but Patsy's as well.

Though they don't come out and say it, Lucy and Patsy were obviously enjoying some cocktails — and, based on Lucy's face after she finishes her second, some pretty strong ones too. After sitting through an hour and a half of Minion jokes and breathlessly paced animated action, it's likely most parents in the audience were extremely jealous of Lucy at that moment. And even if there were some adult themes and jokes folded in, they likely spent the ride home dreaming of a glass of wine to celebrate surviving another day of summer with the kids.