Megamind (2010)

Director: Tom McGrath
Story: Alan J. Schoolcraft, Brent Simons
Cast: Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill 
Music: Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe
Time: 96 minutes
Bottom-line: A new experience for a superhero film

A movie involving a number of themes, with the characters created to spoofs of Superman’s lead roles, Megamind sets the tone for a different type of superhero animation film. The film stars Will Ferrell and Tina Fey in the Lead roles, with Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Ben Stiller and David Cross playing the supporting roles.

Megamind and his minion fish
(voiced by Cross)

“I'm falling to my death. How did it all come to this, you ask? My end starts at the beginning...the very beginning!”
With that as his opening line, Megamind (Ferrell) tells us his story, starting from the time of his birth in another planet. Along with Metro Man (Pitt), Megamind is sent to Earth, where they grow up to be superheroes and supervillians respectively. Metro Man always seems to have the upper hand in their battles, so Megamind decides to kidnap the love of Metro Man, Roxanne Ritchi (Fey) and as Metro Man attempts to rescue her Megamind finally uses a trick and wins the battle, and ends up killing Metro Man. Unlike what he expected, Megamind actually misses the fun: “What's the point of being bad when there's no good to try and stop you?” he asks himself. So he creates a new superhero out of Roxanne’s cameraman, Hal (Hill) and names him Titan. However things go wrong when Hal decides to misuse his superpowers, and Megamind starts having second thoughts on being evil...

Metro Man

Megamind is a spoof of Lex Luthor – gets repeatedly beaten by the hero and he finally decides to kidnap the hero’s loved one to set up a trap. Metro Man is a spoof of Superman himself: he can fly, and does only good for everyone around (and notice how he dresses up like Elvis Presley!). Roxanne, as expected, is a spoof of Lois Lane. The twist is that towards the end none of the characters end up what they originally started with, and that is one of the major themes of the story: people have the choice of doing what they want to do, and not to follow what they society expects them to do. More often than not we need some really powerful incident to realise what his purpose is but if we do find it out, then that will be one of the best things to happen to us.

Roxanne

Yes the story is clichéd and is very similar to The Incredibles, but Megamind has its own strengths: the visuals, the dialogues (not as funny as I would have liked but nevertheless) and the weird, but surprising characters. The film also talks a little about friendship
: how we can find friends in the unlikeliest of times and in the people we never thought we would, and how not valuing someone’s friendship can break that person (the extreme case being Hal).

Titan/Tighten (Hal)

Though Megamind isn’t the most original story, it still is a nice combination of several other films I found amusing, including Despicable Me. The humour could have been more polished, but with the memorable characters and excellent vocal work, this is still worth watching!

My Rating: 3/5
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 72%