Something borrowed, something blue
Animated comedy about indigo-hued evil alien a lazy parody of Superman story
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Digital Subscription
One year of digital access for only $205*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/11/2010 (5746 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
THIS amusing animated superhero movie suffers a little too much from the affliction that seems to infect almost all films in the Dreamworks Animation brand. Like the Shrek quadrilogy, it is packaged as a kids movie, but its humour is so frequently aimed above little heads, it feels as if the children have been all but abandoned by the filmmakers.
So ill-considered are the juveniles that, at one point, a character angrily denies the existence of a certain Easter hare and a certain dentally oriented flying sprite during a comic rant.
It’s funny, but only if you aren’t in the company of a small child who is going to ask: “What did he mean by that?”
As with the recent Despicable Me, Megamind puts the spotlight on a habitual megalomaniac bad guy. Blue-skinned alien genius Megamind (voiced by Will Ferrell) comes to Earth as a baby after his home planet explodes, much like Superman. Unfortunately, he arrives at the same time as a more conventionally handsome and conventionally heroic jettisoned baby, who has the good fortune to land in an affluent home, while the blue-skinned babe lands in a high-security facility housing evil geniuses.
Destiny seems to decree that Megamind will be a professional bad guy while the lantern-jawed baby who grows up to be Metro Man (voiced by Brad Pitt) will always be there to confound his latest evil scheme. In the middle is reporter Roxanne Ritchi (Tina Fey), the spunky, unflappable reporter who has so often been kidnapped by Megamind, she treats him with the same resignation she would assign to working overtime.
But when Megamind unexpectedly defeats Metro Man, our villain really does get the blues because, he realizes, he needs a nemesis to define him. So he invents a nemesis, giving superpowers to Roxanne’s nebbishy cameraman (Jonah Hill). Megamind even dons a disguise (think of Marlon Brando’s Jor-El in Superman) to give the lad, dubbed “Tighten,” an education in the proper uses of superpowers.
Suffice it to say the education doesn’t take, and the perpetual bad guy must defy his destiny and save the day for a change.
As with Despicable Me, Megamind can’t hold a computer-generated candle to Pixar’s brilliant riff on the superhero genre, The Incredibles. Instead of inventing new tropes, director Tom McGrath (Madagascar) relies more on a kind of lazy parody, specifically with his twisted take on the Superman/Lois Lane/Lex Luthor triangle of Superman myth.
The production and the 3-D are first-rate, at least, and the voice cast, which also includes David Cross as Megamind’s fishy minion named Minion, adds more than it detracts, particularly Ferrell, working well within his live-action specialty of pompous self-delusion.
But where, oh, where is the hero this movie really needs?
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!
It’s… a gifted screenwriter!
Too late, alas.
randall.king@freepress.mb.ca
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
MOVIE REVIEW
Megamind
Featuring the voices of Will Ferrell, Tina Fey and Brad Pitt
Grant Park, Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne
PG
3 out of five stars
Other Voices
Selected excerpts from reviews of Megamind.
The voice casting is on the money and these funny people — and I’m including Pitt, who plays this sort of self-mocking Adonis well, even in animated form — make this cute comedy come off.
— Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
Superb 3-D graphics and silly running gags (Megamind routinely mispronounces words such as school) should keep kids amused, while sly political and pop culture references will get laughs from adults.
— Thelma Adams US Weekly
Megamind has bright comic minds behind it — not mega but close — and 3-D effects showing what the gimmick can do when filmmakers care.
— Steve Persal, St. Petersburg Times
Megamind is less a satire of dastardly deeds than a nimbly spectacular comedy of ego.
— Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
Unfortunately, the underdeveloped story and characters seem to be there to service the visuals, rather than the other way around.
— David Germain, Associated Press
I found my son’s Kryptonite: boring superhero ripoffs voiced by cheque-cashing actors. At least Steve Carell used an accent.
— Robert Wilonsky, Village Voice
Though enlivened by some moderately clever twists on the superhero-movie template, Megamind never shakes off a feeling of been-there, spoofed-that.
— Justin Chang, Variety
— Compiled by Shane Minkin
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Advertisement Advertise With Us
Advertisement Advertise With Us
