Movie Review: Megamind

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Alright, I admit it. I don't like Will Ferrell and I went to see a Will Ferrell movie. Luckily it was only the voice of Will Farrell and not the man boy Will Ferrell that drives me nuts! But just like many of his man boys who had big or over inflated egos, so too was the ego of Megamind.

The story is a superhero story but at the same time, not. We get the origin story of a superhero and his archenemy as told from the archenemy point of view. It also calls into the question of nature vs nurture. Are superheros and archenemies automatically superheros and archenemies by birth or are they created because of their environments, their living conditions or the people that exerted influence on them. And then, the big "What If" question. What if the superhero was destroyed by the archenemy? What then. All questions brought to bear in this movie.

Brad Pitt voices Metroman who is the yin to Ferrell's Megamind's yang. Roxanne Ritchi voiced by Tina Fey was the constant target of Megamind for Metroman to rescue. But she's a reporter with spunk and a camera man, Hal (voiced by Jonah Hill) who has a crush on her too! He follows her like a little puppy dog but she doesn't get the clues that he likes her.

The last main character who didn't get recognition in the trailers was David Cross who played Tobias on Fox's Arrested Development and now plays Andy Weeks on Running Wilde. He plays Megamind's side kick, Minion. He's a fish that has his bowl attached to a body that looks like a mechanical ape with a ghost buster proton pack like attachment on his back. Weird stuff. And what is it about Minions with animated films lately. First you have the little yellow pills helping Gru in Despicable Me and now an adroit furry mechanized body with a fish brain. Very odd coincidence that they would use the same word in both movies!

Then a number of questions are begged: What sort of goals does a bad guy set when the good guy is no longer around? What if the good guy gets tired of it all and just wants to get away and chill for a while? Can the bad guy ever get the girl? Interesting hypotheses for a PG rated for action and some language computer animated film. And as we saw in The Social Network ladies, watch how you burn your guy because that unrequited affection may come back to bite you in the butt!

The universe of these superheros didn't collide with the superhero and villain universe from The Incredibles. Otherwise things would have looked a lot different for our heroes and villains. Edna Mode would have had a cow dahling. Fringe on Metroman's costume, puhleez, it was a hobo suit. AND everyone had capes! Edna would have read them the riot act! Too much of it Dahling...NO CAPES!

The 2D version looked fine. I can't see where the 3D would have been any super improvement. With the computer generated images, there were a couple of background details that I noticed like small waves of water washing over pavement or the way buildings were crumbling showing attention to some of the finer points. Ultimately, we want a movie that looks good and has a good plot too. We got a little of both in this 96 minute movie. Don't leave the theater right away when the credit start to run. There is an extra scene before the main credits roll and it's sort of cute in what it revealed.

The Movie Monkey

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