You know you’re onto a winner with your film – and its franchise – when it breaks the impressive $1 billion mark at the global box office, and that’s exactly what happened with 2017’s Despicable Me 3.

And the franchise has become a bit of a money maker for Universal Pictures and Illumination, what with the Minions spin-offs, video games, theme park attraction and of course the merch. So another instalment was inevitable. But how does it stack up against Gru’s other adventures?

With the class of ’84 re-uniting, Gru (Steve Carell) finds himself returning to his school, Lycée Pas Bon. But he isn’t there just to catch up with his school mates, he’s there in an official capacity for the Anti-Villain League (AVL), where he arrests his old school adversary Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell), who announced his evil plans on stage.

All is well with the world until Gru is informed that Maxime has managed to break out of prison, and is more than likely out to seek revenge. This means that Gru and the entire family have to move and take on new identities. But is it enough to keep them safe from the warped mind of Maxime?

With the first in this series released in 2010, you would imagine that it can be quite a challenge in keeping it fresh. And that’s exactly what this fourth instalment feels like, somewhat of a struggle to maintain just that.

They have kind of brought it on themselves with the cute Minions, who have proved so popular they’ve had their own spin-off films. The fact is, the Minions are a far more entertaining proposition than Gru has ever been, so it’s no surprise to find them included. What is surprising is how choppy the script is with the narrative spilt into a fair number of different avenues. You have the relationship between Gru and Maxime – which is probably the weakest out of all of them. Then you have the fact the family have to take on new identities in a new locale. And there’s also another new character thrown into the mix, with Gru and Lucy having a new baby. And then Gru’s relationship with his next door neighbour. And Gru’s relationship with his neighbour’s daughter Poppy. And then the Minions sent away to become special AVL agents. So it’s extraordinarily busy for an animated family film.

And although we’re used to cartoons telling their stories in bite-sized chunks, a la Looney Tunes, this patchwork of stories here doesn’t feel very coherent or cohesive, and doesn’t really knit together.

It feels as if the filmmakers conceded early on that this particular storyline between Gru and Maxime just wasn’t enough to carry the whole film, so have just thrown as much as they can at it to see what a sticks, and the answer is not much.

Thankfully the Minions on their own provide enough silliness to entertain youngsters, and the animation is impressive, it’s just a shame that the story itself is despicably uneven.