Mega-Late

Animation

Entry posted by Nathan Strum January 13, 2011

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So, I finally got around to seeing DreamWorks' MegaMind.

Last week.

Yeah, I was a little late with that, and then forgot that I'd watched it, so I'm late writing the review, too. :roll:

Anyway, MegaMind is DreamWorks' take on the superhero genre.

You know... like Pixar did a few years ago with The Incredibles.

Sort of like how Pixar did Toy Story, then DreamWorks did Small Soldiers.

Or how Pixar did A Bug's Life, and DreamWorks did Antz.

Or how Pixar did Finding Nemo, and DreamWorks did Shark Tale.

Or how Pixar did Monsters, Inc., and DreamWorks did Monsters vs. Aliens.

Just sayin' is all... :ponder:

Anyway, MegaMind manages to differ itself from The Incredibles pretty well by being nowhere nearly as good. Plus, the plot is different. MegaMind is effectively a SuperMan parody, but instead of focusing on the (bland) superhero, the focus is instead turned on the villain - MegaMind.

The movie was okay - entertaining enough, but without being anything special. Will Ferrell (MegaMind) wasn't nearly as irritating as I thought he'd be. The problem was, he wasn't nearly as funny as he should have been. The whole movie generally fell kind of flat, humor-wise. Sure, there were some funny moments, and a few good action sequences, but not really enough of either. Tiny Fey was entirely wasted as the heroine/love interest/damsel in distress. Any competent voice actress could have done the exact same job with the role that she did. Not that Fey was bad in it, but rather she just wasn't given much of anything to do. As for the hero, I spent the entire film thinking he was voiced by George Clooney, when it was actually Brad Pitt. Eh... whatever. Same thing.

The story had some nice twists, but it was still pretty predictable. Overall, it was just entertaining enough to hold my attention. There certainly wasn't anything else in the theater to distract me - my friend and I were the only two people there. (Although his snoring was distracting a couple of times.)

Which brings up the inevitable question... if we hadn't shown up, would they have still shown the movie? :ponder:

The animation and character models are years behind where Pixar is. Fey's character (a TV reporter - of course) looked especially bad (weird eyes and misshapen forehead), and there's a nerd character (her cameraman) who looks entirely too much like a fat version of the main human character (Linguini) from Ratatouille. The texturing and detail just weren't quite there, either. The whole thing lacked much in the way of a unique identity or visual style. "Bland" would be the best description, although the villain's lair had some potential, and the villain's sidekick looked cool. In fact, the sidekick was the most entertaining character in the film (which is far too often the case in animated films). I saw the film in 2-D, so I can't speak to how well the 3-D did or didn't work, but there are times where they were intentionally throwing things at the camera for the sake of 3-D, which in 2-D just looks stupid.

Overall, I'd give MegaMind a 6/10. That may be a little generous, but the popcorn was good, Will Ferrell wasn't bad, and if you can see it for cheap on Netflix or wait to watch it for free on TV, there are worse ways to kill an hour and a half.

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Nathan Strum 11,923

Posted January 14, 2011

Forgot one thing that really annoyed me about this film - the pointless, post-movie, pre-end-credits, pop-music, celebratory-dance-number which seems to be a trademark of DreamWorks movies. It absolutely serves no purpose whatsoever. It's just the characters idiotically breaking into a dance number at the end of the movie. For NO reason.

I hate that.