Movies: Megamind

Score: ****1/2 out of *****

Long Story Short: Megamind is an excellent animated film, a DreamWorks production on par with the usually-superior Pixar films. It has it all: an original, genre-flipping idea; great characters brought to life by a perfect cast of voice actors led by Will Ferrell; a great sense of humor (see Ferrell, Will); and so on. Your eyes will be delighted by the fun CGI (even if it's standard fare these days), your brain will have some things to work on, and your heart will take a nice ride. Enjoy!


Once again, I'm late in seeing this one, by about a month and a half. Thus, I saw it in a "cheap" theater, which unfortunately had awful audio - quiet to the point of somewhat hard to hear, and bad quality. Anyway, this one was directed by Tom McGrath (Madagascar) and produced by DreamWorks, Pixar's main "competitor." Despite the lousy audio, I enjoyed it a lot, and so on to the specifics.

The film starts with some cleverly animated exposition: Megamind (Ferrell) and Metro Man (Pitt) are both aliens sent by their parents to Earth, a la Superman. However, while Metro Man ends up in a great home and is one of the "popular kids," in addition to having all kinds of superpowers, Megamind literally is raised in a jail, and when sent to school is left behind by his peers, thus causing him to take up his evil occupation. Megamind and Metro Man continue to go at it through the years, with Metro Man always winning and rescuing an increasingly exasperated reporter Roxanne (Fey). One day, however, to everyone's surprise, Megamind finally eliminates Metro Man.

Megamind and his sidekick Minion (Cross) run rampant through Metro City (which Ferrell pronounces as rhyming with "atrocity"), but the evil-doer soon grows bored with the lack of a challenge. By accident, he starts to develop a relationship with Roxanne via an alter ego of a "normal" person (using his gizmos). Meanwhile, Megamind also attempts to create a superhero of his own to make things fun again in the city, and Hal, Roxanne's doting partner, is the target. I'll finish off by saying, things don't go quite as planned for Megamind, as you might imagine, but I won't spoil any more of it.

Typically, acting is not a big concern when it comes to animated films; here, however, the cast is just about perfect, and certainly worth discussing. As you know, I'm a huge fan of Will Ferrell, and he does a phenomenal job voicing Megamind. It is easy to recognize his voice, but he also doesn't go over the top with it; he just does a great job of portraying a somewhat sinister, funny, and relatable villain. Tina Fey as Roxanne the reporter was also an excellent choice; she gives her character strength, intelligence, and also plenty of charm through her performance. David Cross, whose voice I recognized (although I'm not sure why, because I'm not really familiar with his past work) is a fun sidekick to Ferrell; Jonah Hill is perfect as a fawning partner to Roxanne; and Pitt is appropriate as an everything-goes-my-way hero. Yeah, they got the stars for this movie - but they got the PERFECT stars.

At this point in cinematic technology, it's kind of hard to separate one film's CGI from all the rest. And I wouldn't say Megamind manages to do so, but the visuals are simply a pleasant side dish to the other rich elements of the film. The first third or so is certainly where they decided to pack most of the laughs, a good decision by which to accompany the exposition, and Ferrell leads the humor naturally. As you can probably tell from the plot synopsis, this is a film that sort of turns a genre upside down; when done well, I really like this. And Megamind succeeds in doing so; I knew the basic premise of the movie coming into it, but there's enough going on that it never really feels like it's slipping into cliche. The film also imparts some thoughtful messages, without overly emphasizing them.

***

Four and a half stars may seem pretty high for a film like this; but it's just such a strong film all around, in my opinion. It is creative, has great characters, a fun plot, good messages, and an emotional core. What more can you ask for? I think it may be my favorite DreamWorks animated film; it's certainly a lot better than the spectacularly overrated How To Train Your Dragon from earlier this year. I hope to watch this again on Netflix later, so I can hear it better - this might even be a DVD purchase!