First, a bit of news: Audible has bought the audiobook rights for the first two Rydding Village books, and it looks like they’re planning to release in late January. It will depend on how well these do whether or not they do any other books.

Meanwhile, last weekend was a Despicable Me kind of weekend. The fourth movie was on Peacock, but I couldn’t remember anything about the third one, so I decided to watch that one first. In case you haven’t been bombarded by the product marketing from these movies, particularly the Minions, the gist of the series is that a supervillain who’s actually a decent guy deep down inside needs kids as part of his complicated evil scheme and adopts three girls from an orphanage, which ends up turning his life upside down so he’s no longer a villain. In the second movie, he meets a ninja-like super spy and gets married.

It turns out that the reason I couldn’t remember the third movie is that I hadn’t ever seen it. Nothing about it was familiar, and I didn’t get that, “Oh, yeah, this,” burst of realization that I usually get when I’m reading or watching something I don’t remember but that it turns out I have read or seen before. That movie is pretty forgettable, even if you have seen it. A week later, I can barely remember it. In that one, both Gru (our villain turned hero) and Lucy (his wife) lose their jobs in the Anti-Villain League after an operation goes wrong. When Gru hears from a twin brother he didn’t know he had (it’s a Parent Trap situation of each parent taking a twin, except for the part where they end up at the same summer camp), the family reunion seems like a good idea, except the brother is keen to learn how to be a supervillain from Gru, and Gru thinks he might be able to work with his brother to take down his enemy so he and Lucy can get their jobs back, but he doesn’t want his brother to know that he’s not really a supervillain anymore.

The thing that I like about these movies is the underlying sweetness. They’re about family bonds, whether by birth or adoption. Lucy is a good stepmom to Gru’s adopted daughters, not at all a wicked stepmother. She’s trying to figure things out because she’s not exactly the maternal type. Gru loves his family and is elated to be reunited with his brother. You expect the brother to be a rival, but it’s not a competition. But the execution of this plot is pretty blah. Even the Minions aren’t all that interesting or fun.

The fourth movie has a really fun premise: Gru and his family have to go into hiding after his nemesis escapes from prison and is bent on revenge, so they have to blend into a bland upscale suburb under fake identities. Unfortunately, it doesn’t use this premise at all, which is frustrating. I loved the idea of seeing this Eastern European-ish former supervillain and his quirky superspy wife, plus their eccentric kids and a few Minions, trying to blend in with posh suburbanites and their country club lifestyle. Talk about a culture clash!

In the Save the Cat screenwriting structure, the second quarter of the story is called “Fun and Games” or “The Promise of the Premise.” If you take the core premise of the story and list the things you expect to happen, this is when most of those things happen. You’re playing with the concept as the characters test the waters of the situation they’ve found themselves in. They usually cross some kind of threshold and enter a new situation at about a quarter of the way through the story, then things get really serious and make a turn at around the halfway point, so this part is about exploring the new situation. Most of the stuff in a movie trailer tends to come from this section of the movie, since it gives you an idea of what the movie is about without giving any real turning point spoilers.

It’s not exactly a huge mental exercise to come up with a list of things that can happen with Gru and his family in the suburbs, but they don’t really do any of it. Almost all of the situations they find themselves in come from the setup of their hiding being utterly incompetent. For instance, they give Lucy the cover job of being a high-end hairstylist — something she has no training or experience in. The big joke is that she screws up with her first client and has to flee when the client comes after her for revenge. That’s just bad planning, not a culture clash of a ninja-like superspy having to fit in with the country club suburban moms. I wanted to see her chaperoning a school field trip and having to use her skills to keep the kids in line and out of trouble but without getting caught doing something a normal mom shouldn’t be able to do. Or at a playdate with the youngest and fending off a bully or a loose dog on the playground.

They tell us that the oldest, a middle schooler, had a bad day at school, but we never see her at school. The problem with the youngest is that she doesn’t want to tell her fake name, since that’s a lie. Her dad just tells her she needs to lie without explaining why.

As for Gru himself, his main story isn’t about trying to blend in. It’s about the neighbor’s daughter being an aspiring supervillain who recognizes him and blackmails him into helping her with a heist. I do like the way her story turns out, but I still wanted something more for Gru, since a lot of his insecurity is whether someone like him really can be a good father. What happens if he’s in a place where the only thing he has going on is being a good father and keeping his family safe, but he can’t openly use any of his usual methods? The only culture clash moment is when his neighbor invites him to play tennis, and a Minion goes along and plays umpire, tilting the game in Gru’s favor. It’s funny, but it’s more of that hiding incompetence, as going out in public with a Minion is pretty much waving a giant “Here’s Gru!” flag.

The movie itself is actually okay and a lot of fun, but I found myself very frustrated by what it wasn’t. I’m surprised that with all the people in the movie industry who had to have been involved in creating it, no one said, “Hey, shouldn’t we be playing with the culture clash here?”

I don’t know what this weekend’s movie(s) will be. I’m not sure what I’m in the mood for.