MEGAMIND 8.5*

Direction  : Tom McGrath

Writers  : Alan J Schoolcraft, Brent Simons

Cast : Will Ferrell, Jonah Hill Ad Brad Pitt

The supervillain Megamind finally conquers his nemesis, the hero Metro Man... but finds his life pointless without a hero to fight.

 

  An animated film about a master villain who turns out to be not as nasty as he first seems? Doesn’t that sound like Despicable Me? Actually, Megamind, directed by Tom McGrath, who was behind the Madagascar series, and written by Alan J Schoolcraft and Brent Simons, is like a whole lot of Hollywood movies (Superman and The Karate Kid just a few of them). It’s meant to be a children’s film but, as is often the case these days, is so wordy, so knowing, so citational that it appears to have been made solely for adults.

Made by DreamWorks, this would-be family affair begins with Megamind (voiced by Will Ferrell) falling through the skies to what seems certain death. As he plummets, he thinks about his early life, its glumness and sorrows, and talks the viewer through a catalogue of his failures.

His face is detergent blue. He has a head that makes him look like a cross between an earnest electronica musician and a dogged Central European midfielder struggling to keep his place in a Premiership team. At school almost every experiment he tried backfired. Classmates shunned him. His only friend was a piranha-robot called Minion (David Cross).

The older he grew, the more often he came up against his nemesis Metro Man (Brad Pitt). If Megamind was cold and creepy, Metro Man was adored by all the residents of Metro City for his handsome features, glossy hair (marred only by a touch of dandruff), and his dashing heroism. Even Roxanne Ritchi (Tina Fey), a foxy TV news reporter whose job requires her to stay neutral, nearly faints each time she sees the golden-boy redeemer.