Megamind

MPAA (PG) USCCB (A-II) Roger Ebert (3 stars) Fr. Dennis (2 stars)

IMDb listing - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1001526/
CNS/USCCB Review - http://www.usccb.org/movies/m/megamind.shtml
Roger Ebert's Review - http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101103/REVIEWS/101109990

Tonight, I went to see Megamind. I’ve tended to be more of a Will Farrell fan than pretty much everyone that I know. And I’ve liked most of the animated movies that have come out in recent years and Megamind did quite well in the box office last weekend. However, I was not very impressed with Megamind.

To be sure, the movie had its moments, but it seemed to me Megamind was too much of a retread of a lot of those recent animated movies. In How to Train Your Dragon, the boy protagonist Hiccup’s side-kick was, well, a dragon. Megamind (voice by Will Farrell) had a sidekick as well, a somewhat ugly-looking fish named Minion (voice by David Cross). Speaking of minions, Despicable Me’s, Gru (voice by Steve Carell) had a legion of absolutely adorable “evil minions.” Megamind also had legion of minions, which looked more mechanical and somewhat more evil, but they just seemed to be a play on or small development of Despicable Me’s minions.

Then Tina Fey’s character Roxanne Richie looked and sounded a lot like Sharon Stone, Brad Pitt’s character Metro Man (the “Good Nemesis” of the more Evil Megamind) looked kinda like George Clooney. Even Megamind himself (voice played by Will Farrell) who didn’t look much like Will Farrell or any other famous actor, had a lot of lines that sounded more like things that Ben Stiller would say than Farrell. (Stiller is an Executive Producer for this movie). Jonah Hill’s character Tighten, however, looked almost exactly like an animated Jonah Hill. One wonders if there were some problems in casting this movie...

Then the plot and theme are also further confused. The main theme seemed to be a variation of Despicable Me's again: that it's not all that easy (or fun) to be completely Evil. Despicable Me was a rather straight-forward story. Megamind goes through a fairly large number of plot twists, not all necessarily bad. However, it makes for a rather messy movie.

All in all, I’m not sure if this movie is going to be remembered as the “best work” or any of the people involved -- Farrell, Fey, Jonas, Pitt, or Stiller helping to pay for it all. And I don't think the movie compares well to other recent animated movies like How to Train Your Dragon, Despicable Me, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, or even G-Force.


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