As I have mentioned as of late animated movies have stepped out of the realm of just kiddie fare and are actually pretty good. As such the latest in the line of the Anti hero or non traditional hero movies is here.
We start off at the collapse of 2 distant worlds far far away. From one planet comes our Antagonist, he has the brains, he has the curiosity, and he has THE MINION so obviously he is the bad guy right, I mean I said Minion not Sidekick. And from the other world comes our hero, he's handsome, he's super strong, he's invulnerable he is your TYPICAL super hero. Now their rivalry basically really does start from the crib(slash space ship) as their ships bump into each other relentlessly before they finally arrive to their respective guardians for the story.
Okay let me stop some of you are saying "wait space ships, dieing planets, crash landing on earth to guardians why does this sound like superman" well save for the other ship crash landing EXACTLY when his ship does I mean it is superman(in one of the new tellings SUPERGIRL'S ship crash lands like 30 years later but I digress). I mean all the baby needed was a spit curl and it would have been a TOTAL RIPOFF of the iconic DC character. Hell there are quite a few Lex Luthor Superman similarities throughout this story, but it's kind of fun.
Anyway Metroman(real name never discussed) bumps Megaminds ship out of the way and lands in the quaint rich estate of two wealthy parents. The mom attentive and the dad is the typical rich male stereotype(yes I know HUGE BATMAN RIP OFF in a sense) now I don't know if Metroman's parents ever die but he appears to have a normal and happy childhood. Megamind's ship lands in the prison, now wait stop I know what your saying "okay so why didn't they take a BABY out of the prison", I don't know probably because the story is more fun if the antagonist sees jail as his home. Look its a movie not real life just have fun with it. Anyway you see Metroman getting a good and normal upbringing and his super powers and in jail you see the manifestation of Megamind's intelligence. He may not have done anything to ORIGINALLY deserve to be in jail but instituting a jail break at like 18 months yup bad boy. At about grade school age Megamind is sent to Shool(I don't know he has this weird speech thing he calls school shool and Metro city{oops before I forget he's Metro man because he protects Metro city}Metrossity its goofy) and bumps into his old rival Metroman, hi jinx ensue and Megamind finds his calling as an EVIL super genius. You see him invent lots of Goofy gadgets in his attempt to fit in.
Fast forward to the future like most super villians Megamind is locked up in jail and seems to have a flair for the flamboyant (not to the level of being flamboyantly gay like some old school super villains but flamboyant), the man loves to make and entrance and or EXIT. As in most superhero stories you have seen that Megamind the bad guy has lost often crazy scheme after crazy scheme Metroman has stopped him. The thing is (this subject was broached in the Incredibles) this dynamic has it seems become monotonous to everyone. I mean this is your typical monthly installment comic book stuff, they have witty banter back and forth, a damsel is put in distress(she's a reporter so of course it is cliche') and here comes the gallant hero to save her.
Now here's the problem for me this is the "twist" of the movie where instead of waking up to prince charming the princess wakes up to THE OGRE(yeah yeah shrek reference). Now while in the trailers I have seen you kinda know what happens with Megamind you don't really know how. So this is a give away point and as I stated I hate ruining movies. Basically as was shown in the trailer the Hero would like to change careers. So the bad guy is running amok except well, you know he kind of liked the old dynamic. (another superman reference) as when in the Superman cartoon they referenced the death of ole superman even his greatest foe while he may want him out of the way it's that flight of fancy he wants it but really doesn't know what to do with it if it actually came to pass(yeah yeah Dark Knight joker to Harvey speech it's a super hero movie give me a break) and Megamind gets melancholy(he mispronounces it but that's his shtick or at least part of it).
I mean he does the whole villain victory lap, runs amok for a few days but it gets old REALLY old to him because like I said it was a flight of fancy thing he had all these plans for "the next time" that he will never get to try. Okay the whole movie seems to have stuck with me so I will stop going into details here. This movie employs some top of the line talent for the main roles:Will Farrel is Megamind, Brad Pitt is Metroman, Tina Fey is Roxy, and Jonah Hill is the cameraman Hal. Oops I almost forgot David cross plays minion, which I think is a perfect use for David Cross's talents he's great when he can let loose one liners and possibly be a suck up. I wouldn't mind seeing Cross vs Reynolds in a quip fight(not unlike spidey vs deadpool) it's just NOOOT too many places you could pull that off live action, animated somewhere sure but Ryan's been a Gym Warrior lately and Dave just looks like dude you hung out at the quad with back in the day discussing Star Wars vs Star Trek weapon output ratios.(damn digression my bad)
Anyway the voice talents mesh perfectly, again being a super hero movie yes there are some cliche's that can't be avoided, being another in a line of anti hero super hero movies it runs into a few more little cliche's but it is a fun romp through Metro City even the "love story" break doesn't seem heavy handed, actually I say break but they fit it in during the whole conversion period. There is a lot more I could say about the movie but I would be ruining it Good guy fights bad guy, bad guy falls for the girl, bad guy becomes MOSTLY good guy, and they all live happily ever after. I don't know if you can sequel this but hey kung fu panda got a sequel and shrek got 3 sequels so if you can get the original cast back together there are a few super hero premises you COULD take on if you wanted to make fun of a few of them. Take your kids to go see Megamind if you have them or if you just want to sit back and enjoy a few laughs go have some grown up fun. Oh wait I almost forget there is one EGREGIOUS form fitting pants in between the butt cheeks part in the movie and Hal had some self wedgie issues for a minute so you know you've been forewarned, you know it's coming don't be all like "AAAARGH my eyes" I'm telling you now Hal brief wedgie issue, Megamind spandex too tightly molded to the crack two scenes don't make it weird just prepare for the slight moment of awkwardness and move on, yes you can laugh(just not too hard).
UPDATE(11-11-10)
as I noticed someone found this page googling for the line about destiny:
When placing megamind in the spaceship Megamind's father says something along the lines of "son you have a great destin *sound muffled by the closing canopy*", you never really hear the full line about destiny so you have no clue if his father was telling him to be the hero or the villain. The assumption though of course is that he is going to be a villain because his mother puts his minion in the spaceship with him. Mainly because of previous comic book lore- sidekick equals hero, Minion equals evil villain
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