Oh Dreamworks, you've done it again. You've given away all your best jokes in the trailers. You've hyped up all the big celebrities you've used for voices and then barely have them do anything worthy of their talents. I mean yeesh, you get a big comedienne like Tina Fey and then you give her a character who's not that funny, save a couple side comments. And Brad Pitt's MetroMan is pretty much only in the movie for all the moments you see in the trailer. Seriously, you needed Brad Pitt for this? Oh yeah and write an original song once in a while! Don't just have montages with music from the 80s! And stop having your characters break dance! That was the most pointless tasteless tribute to Micheal Jackson EVER!
Ok, that's getting off on the wrong foot, because Megamind is actually really good. Its fantastically animated, especially the character animation, the famous voice actors are over-hyped but they do a great job, it's mostly well written, even if there are parts where I want to punch the screenwriter, and it's fun and enjoyable and worth a trip to the theater. It's either better or as good as you think it's going to be, because while it is good, it's not fantastic, the ending is just stupid, and it has all the typical traits of Dreamworks film, good and bad, including that it will inevitably make huge amounts of money because it jams huge amounts of advertising down our throat. Also, what's slowly becoming a trait of Dreamworks, believe it or not, is that its cleverly amusing, but Megamind actually isn't that laugh at loud funny.
Dreamworks Animation has had a lock on parody settings for a lot of their films since Shrek, in some cases to its detriment. Ok in Megamind they do a pretty good job creating a new story from what's essentially a parody of Superman, but in general I wish we could go back to making films with stories not parodies of stories, and it doesn't help that all the other animation companies are imitating Dreamworks because imitating Pixar would just be a bit too hard. But as we've seen from How to Train your Dragon and even from the last Shrek movie, sort of, is that Dreamworks, along with everyone else is trying to take a hint from Pixar, is noticing that movies that balance heart and humor work the best. Just couple problems with Dreamworks trying this tactic with Megamind; 1) Pixar has more or less perfected the balance and you have not, and 2) Megamind is a supervillian parody with Will Ferrell, you don't have to be, and frankly you can't be, The Incredibles, but you can at least be funny. But as stated, the best jokes are in the trailer aside from some clever visual gags, the rest of the film is more or less taken rather seriously. The character of Megamind is an amusing character on his own but in the end he's actually a slightly more serious version of Drakken from Kim Possible. The story is actually pretty good even if it borders on cheesy and silly at times, and actually gets a bit complicated, but it still begs the question, Dreamworks, why so serious?
This was actually the problem with Monsters vs Aliens too (though Megamind isn't nearly as bad). For all the action and comic potential of a movie called MONSTERS vs ALIENS, it ended up not being that funny because the movie kept being sidetrack by the main character's love interest story when the guy was so obviously a dick. I know we've gotten on your case Dreamworks that your movies tend to have more goofy jokes than dramatic plot, but you can't just throw drama in for the sake of drama. If your going to make a comedy, make a comedy! You don't have to have drama in movies, for example Airplane is a great comedy, why couldn't MvA be more like that?
Alright one other thing that bugs me. There are some story cliches that I just can't stand anymore. One is overhearing a conversation, getting the wrong idea, and everything gets blow out of proportion as a result. The other one is the disguising/acting/lying that your someone you're not, and then in the final conflict, "Gasp! The betrayal! I how dare you lie / trick me even though it was probably for a good reason!"
Yeah I'm just sick of that. It's only a small part of the Megamind story, but it still bugs me. It's saving grace is that it doesn't save the 'reveal' for the very final climax, they actually get over it pretty quick.
And yeah, the Dreamworks over-advertising is annoying, especially when the jokes given away in the trailers have almost better delivery than they do in the actual movie. On the other hand, there is a whole bunch of story that the trailers don't reference at all, so the story is, believe me, really different than what you're expecting. Wouldn't it surprise you to hear that Metroman's 'retirement' is actually supposed to be a shocking twist in the story? Yeah. But now that I think about, because recent film criticism, or wannabe film criticism, hinges largely on whether the shocking twist is predictable, if Shutter Island is any indication, so maybe because they thought the twist was too obvious they just gave it away in the trailer so know one could say 'I saw that coming' like a pretentious douche. It actually doesn't ruin the story that we know he retires.
So yeah, not perfect and Toy Story 3 has no competition, but it's a lot of fun. Its about on the same level as How to Train Your Dragon and Despicable Me, though you only need to see it in 3d if you're a true financial masochist.
Best hidden 80s reference line: "Pretty sneaky sis."
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