Blogorium Review: Megamind

 Megamind was the second "villain who goes good but doesn't really know how to do that well" movie that came out in 2010 - Despicable Me was the first, and as I'm constantly being told by children or friends who have children, the more popular of the two. However, people my age without kids were on the sidelines whispering, "you know, Megamind is actually pretty good." While I haven't seen Despicable Me, I did watch Megamind, and I can totally understand why kids wouldn't really be into it. I can also understand why geeks would be, and not just because Guillermo Del Toro and Justin Theroux were story consultants (listed in the credits, by the way).

 The story isn't necessarily original - in fact, it's Superman but told from the perspective of Lex Luthor, if Lex Luthor were also General Zod or something to that effect. Two babies were launched from two different planets facing oblivion. One landed in a wealthy, well-to-do family's living room and the other landed in a prison for the criminally gifted. Accordingly, one discovered he had super powers and the other realized he was very good at constructing devices of mayhem. They grew up to be Metro Man (Brad Pitt) and Megamind (Will Ferrell), and along with his minion, well, Minion (David Cross), the latter attempts to destroy the former and fails miserably every time. That doesn't stop Megamind from kidnapping reporter Roxanne Ritchie (Tina Fey) and tricking Metro Man into flying into the fake Metro City Observatory, but when Megamind accidentally kills his nemesis, he's left not knowing quite what to do in victory.

 From there the film takes a few choices than I expected - one in particular about the inevitable return of Metro Man - as Megamind settles into what he's supposed to do with Metro City (which he has the habit of pronouncing like atrocity). I wasn't really expecting his plan to construct a new superhero named Titan (well, Tighten) using Roxanne's cameraman Hal (Jonah Hill), or a prolonged flirtation with the reporter while disguised as a guy named Bernard (Ben Stiller), but I think you can guess how things turn out. Well, maybe. The Metro Man subplot has a nice twist, anyway.

 It's not really the familiarity with comic book tropes that's going to throw off kids, though. More likely it's going to be the moral quandary Megamind finds himself in throughout the film - he wants to be evil, but he's not very good at it. On the other hand, when he tries to do the right thing, he's not very good at that either. His huge cranium and blue skin tend to scare off people, and Minion isn't very comforting either: he's a giant fish inside of a robot suit. Megamind has what I've come to refer as the "little cute anthropomorphs that don't talk" that all kiddie movies seem to have these days (in Despicable Me, for example, they're called minions) - but somehow I don't see many cuddly toys being made from the Brainbots.

 There's also the issue of the music which, save for the exception of Michael Jackson's "Bad" and ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky", tends to lean on the heavier side. There's some AC/DC, some Guns 'n Roses, some George Thorogood (guess which song?) and the general attitude of the film reflects that rowdy, unruly attitude. When Titan invariably turns evil and starts destroying Metro City, I can imagine children wiggling in their seats uncomfortably. Of course, adults are probably doing that during the "everything's okay" dance number at the end, but for most of the film they'll be happy not to be pandered to. Megamind may be rated PG and sit comfortably in the shelf next to children's movies, but it is not of children's movies. It's a movie made in stylistically and narratively to be a companion piece to The Incredibles, and while I don't feel Megamind quite makes it that high, the end result is still pleasantly surprising. If you're inclined to check in on what the kids are watching these days (or have friends with children over) this is one of the rare Dreamworks Animation films I've seen not immediately bogged down in pop culture references. Okay, there's one that might be totally irrelevant after 2012, but it made me chuckle. Check Megamind out.