Given its current dominance in the world of children’s entertainment, it may take a moment to remember that Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin’s 2010 animated film Despicable Me once seemed just a little bit subversive. Despicable Me’s main character was Eastern European supervillain Gru (Steve Carell), who was bent on committing visible, malicious villainy. His latest plan was to steal the moon from the sky, only to bring shame on himself.

Despicable Me is set in a world overrun by villains, thieves and monsters with superpowers, but in which there seem to be no heroes. It is only in later sequels that a crime-fighting organization modeled on MI-6 comes into play. Later, Gru gives up his villainy and becomes a crazy suburban father of three precocious girls. In Despicable Me 4, Gru also has a wife and a young son.

The central element of the Despicable Me films is, of course, Gru’s Minions, an army of yellow-skinned, Twinkie-like gnomes who chirp in their own language and are easily distracted by snacks and ass jokes. The Minions have become one of the most iconic cartoon characters of the 21st century, and are either amusing or horrifying depending on whether or not you have kids. In fact, they’ve become so popular that they’ve now been featured in two films of their own.

As of June 2024, there have been six Despicable Me films, and they have all been box office hits, grossing a combined $5.4 billion. Oddly enough, however, none of them have received particularly good reviews. Most of the time, they are viewed as amusing slapstick diversions rather than meaningful works of art. However, according to Rotten Tomatoes, at least one Despicable Me film has received more positive reviews than any other. The first is still the undisputed leader.

Well, by “outstanding” I mean an approval rating of just 80% on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 203 reviews). It seems that many critics responded to the novelty of the film by showing “cheeky” behavior and villainy rather than the usual, boring heroics you might see in a Disney or Pixar film. Despicable Me, at least on some level, tapped into a child’s anarchic pursuit of chaos and centered on a misanthropic character bent on misbehaving. This concept, coupled with the film’s unusual character designs, drew many curious viewers.

And then, of course, there were the Minions, who seemed to be acting out miniature movies of their own while sharing the screen with Gru. These cheeky little sidekicks were brilliant cartoon creations that resembled other recent characters like Scrat from the Ice Age films and the Rabbids from a number of popular Ubisoft video games. Children and adults alike loved these little, suppository-shaped freaks, and they were marketed to the max.

The third film in the series, Minions (2015), posits that the Minions were not created by Gru in a lab, but are eternal, non-evolving beings who exist to help evil entities on their destructive missions. Hidden deep within a giant, sugary cloud of kindness, the Minions contain a tiny grain of punky defiance. Their biological imperative is to perpetuate death. They have the potential to be complete agents of chaos. Unfortunately, they don’t realize this nearly enough, instead following rules and munching bananas.

By the way, “Minions” only has a 56% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And that’s after “Despicable Me 2” (2013) received a 75% approval rating.

The fourth film in the series, Despicable Me 3 (2017), only received an approval rating of 58%, as critics were surely fed up with the series’ antics by this point. Nevertheless, it was the highest-grossing film in the series to date, grossing over $1.03 billion alone. It was followed in 2022 by Minions: The Curse of Minions, a sequel to Minions, but this time with Gru as a young boy. Oh yeah, the first Minions was set in the late 1960s and featured plenty of 1960s music and Austin Powers-style slapstick. Minions: The Curse of Minions was set in the early 1970s and followed with a soundtrack full of ’70s hits. “Hound of the Mini Boss” surprised everyone with an approval rating of 70% on Rotten Tomatoes.

In 2024, Despicable Me 4 grossed $811 million. As with the other films, its overwhelming commercial success was not reflected in the critics, who gave the film an approval rating of only 56%.

And those are just the six feature films. Thanks to the DVD specials, there are also 20 Despicable Me short films in the world, most of which revolve around the Minions. They are like modern-day deities, demigods who represent our tendency toward clumsiness, childishness, and fondness for behinds.

Hilariously, in the incredibly expensive 2018 sci-fi film Mortal Engines, set in the 31st century, residents had dug up a pair of Minions statues without knowing what they were. They concluded that the Minions were magical beings worshipped by people of the early 21st century. Considering the amount of merchandise and money spent on them, that’s not entirely untrue.