Review: Dreamworks’ Megamind

04 April 2011 // Reviews (Film)

Jess Gurr

Writer

Click the image to buy from Amazon.

Megamind was an unexpected treat – having seen the adverts and dismissed the film as another dud on the Dreamworks bandwagon, I wasn’t expecting much from it. But when offered to go and see it, I could hardly say no, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover it actually has a good plot.

Starring Will Ferell as Megamind, the story starts off with the title character as an infant being sent to Earth by his parents when their world is destroyed. Failing miserably at almost everything he does, he is thrust into villainy in an attempt to best his arch nemesis, Metro Man, voiced by Brad Pitt. What makes things worse for Megamind is that everyone in Metro City LOVES Metro Man – including reporter and Megamind’s love interest, Roxanne Ritchie, played by funny lady Tina Fey.

Megamind is charming and unknowingly witty (well, the character is, at least) and Will Ferrell ‘s performance is well thought out. I was impressed that it held your interest for the entire hour and a half, as I hadn’t expected it to do so, but it boded well that I was laughing from the first five minutes onwards.

The film isn’t quite as brilliant as Universal’s “Despicable Me” – another villain-turned-hero story – as is fairly usual with Dreamworks’ offerings; it’s yet another example of animation houses going head to head on similar titles. No offense to the animators and others working on the film, as I’m sure they work very hard, but it smacks of poor imagination when you have to copy another studio’s ideas to try to make money. Shrek was a shining beacon for Dreamworks’ story concept team – they came up with a highly original piece of gold with that one. Sadly, there aren’t many of those coming out of the studio, which is a real shame, as when they put their mind to it, they can produce some real gems.

The film is definitely worth a watch and I’m sure kids (and slightly bigger kids) will love it. Excellent effort and execution… but not so much on originality.

Items mentioned in this article:

Megamind [DVD]

£7.57

Buy Now on Amazon