"Megamind": review

L to R: Jonah Hill as Tighten (sic) and Will Ferrell as Megamind

[WARNING: some spoilers.]

"Megamind" is a Dreamworks animated production that came out in 2010, and I saw it only recently—yet another cultural moment that had somehow slipped by me for years. The movie is a superhero-action-comedy flick directed by Tom McGrath ("Madagascar") starring SNL alums Will Ferrell and Tina Fey, along with Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and David Cross. 

It tells the story of Megamind (Ferrell), one of two aliens who rocketed to Earth as babies when their worlds exploded simultaneously. Megamind and his counterpart, who grows up to become the Superman-like hero Metro Man (Pitt), both land in the area of Metro City, with the blue-humanoid infant Megamind ending up among prisoners, and the more human-looking Metro Man landing in a rich estate. Knowing nothing but prisons, prisoners, and crime, Megamind grows up to become a supervillain; Metro Man, knowing only the patrician life of rich people, with all the privileges that come with such a life, grows up to become Metro City's heroic-but-egotistical protector. Forever documenting the conflict between Megamind and Metro Man is Roxanne Ritchi (Fey) who covers events with the help of her faithful—and infatuated—cameraman Hal Stewart (Hill).

Ironically, Megamind, despite his weather-balloon-sized cranium, proves not to be the mental giant he thinks he is. He concocts fiendish plan after fiendish plan to take over Metro City (which he constantly mispronounces as "Metrocity," rhyming with "velocity"), but Metro Man is always there to thwart him. One scenario that repeats itself to the point of being a running joke is Metro Man's kidnapping of Roxanne, who by this point has become so jaded, and who knows the script so well, that she's actually bored whenever she gets kidnapped and is threatened with all manner of horrible tortures. But one day, as Megamind and Metro Man are battling it out, Metro Man reveals he has a weakness to copper, and Megamind seizes the opportunity to blast Metro Man with a death ray while the latter is trapped inside a copper-domed observatory. Metro Man's skeleton sails across the distance and comes crashing at Megamind's feet. Initially startled and ecstatic at having finally defeated Metro Man, Megamind and his goldfish-like assistant Minion (Cross) go on a spree, terrorizing Metro City.

Eventually, though, Megamind comes to realize that Metro Man had given him a sense of purpose, and now that Megamind had control of Metro City, there was no longer anything to strive for. At the same time, Megamind discovers he's falling for Roxanne, and he uses one of his inventions to change his appearance into that of Bernard, a young museum curator, so as to appear less alien. Megamind also resolves to create a new Metro Man to fight, which means using a bit of Metro Man's DNA to create an injector. Unfortunately, Megamind accidentally injects this super-DNA into Hal Stewart, Roxanne's dumpy, frumpy cameraman. This is when the plot really kicks into gear. The rest of the movie is about how Hal, who renames himself Tighten (sic, not "Titan"), turns out to be a holy terror even worse than Megamind himself, thus forcing Megamind to become—gasp—a superhero who has to save Metro City.

As animated superhero flicks go, "Megamind" is fine, but it's not anywhere near the level of my all-time favorite animated superhero film, "The Incredibles." The voice work and visuals are all great, and there are a few laugh-out-loud moments, but I remember thinking that Neal Patrick Harris, who has supervillain experience after playing the quirky role of Dr. Horrible, might have been a better fit for the main role than Will Ferrell. Regardless, Megamind at least gets something of a character arc; Roxanne, not so much.

I think the thing that bothered me most about the film's setup was that Megamind is never really given much of a chance to show off just what a genius he is. The script, violating the show-don't-tell rule, tells us Megamind is supposed to be a genius, and we do briefly glimpse some of his whackier inventions, but what stands out is that he gets beaten time and again by Metro Man, who is basically Superman but with a moderately human-level IQ. Metro Man, too, could have used a bit more character development. There are hints that, despite his conceited nature, he's actually got a good heart and truly enjoys protecting the people of Metro City even if he somewhat looks down upon them. Unfortunately, and for plot-related reasons, Metro Man drops out of the picture before resurfacing much later thanks to a twist.

If the story has any sort of moral—and movies geared toward children usually do—I suppose it's that you should be yourself, but the movie takes a weird path to arrive at that moral. Perhaps a more fundamental theme is that of nature versus nurture: the movie at first seems to go all-in for nurture, arguing that Megamind and Metro Man became who they were simply by virtue of their childhood environments. But by the end, with Megamind forced into (or maybe choosing) the role of the good guy, the movie could be arguing the opposite: through the new supervillain Tighten, Megamind discovers his own good and caring nature, and this changes him. If this surmise is correct, then "Megamind" might be a deeper movie than I'm giving it credit for, and I might need to watch it again.

"Megamind" didn't exactly move my soul, but it was entertaining enough. It's not "The Incredibles" because I don't think anything can quite reach that level of storytelling, but it's not a bad way to spend 96 minutes. See it with my blessing.