The best thing about Megamind, that is, apart from the gee-wiz-wasn’t-that-a-cool-move animation, is Will Ferrell’s voice. Shrill, soothing, passive-aggressive and always over-confident, Ferrell’s Megamind is a masterpiece of voice-work. Setting aside the actual jokes the voice has to give a life to, just listening to the peculiar, weird sounds Ferrell conjures is an hilarious pleasure; it’s Olympic level vocal acrobatics. Still, the movie around Ferrell's performance isn’t nearly as good as he is.
Essentially it’s a parody/send-up of superheroes and superhero movies, especially the Superman franchise and it abounds with pop culture references, movie-in-jokes, and throw away gags. Like the Man of Steel, Megamind was sent to earth by his parents because his home planet was certain to merge with the infinite (i.e. explode). But unlike Superman, Megamind is not blessed by the kind of looks popular with the folks who go onto design underwear ads. Megamind, not to put too fine a point on it, is ugly in an unearthly way. With his oversized head, Dracula-like arch eyebrows, poppy eyes and blue complexion, Megamind looks like something good enough to feed the dog with, guilt free.
Sadly, Megamind is not just genetically challenged, he’s a crap supervillain too; nothing he says is remotely scary and his evil schemes seem irredeemably silly. Megamind’s ego takes a further hammering in the guise of Metro Man (Brad Pitt), his archrival who is a little like Superman, but with a lot more upper body work and much bigger jaw line.
Early on in the action Megamind gets lucky and, it seems, wipes out Metro Man and soon after falls head over heels for TV reporter and Lois Lane-type Roxanne (Tina Fey, very funny). But just as any comic book fan knows, every villain needs a fair contest. Megamind realises that a world without an opponent is no fun at all (and meaningless too). This is where the script by Alan Schoolcraft and Brent Simons borrow from another fantasy/sci-fi convention; the super-villain who creates a 'beast’ he cannot control. In a series of deliciously funny gags, Megamind and his sidekick Minion (a piranha in a robot suit voiced by David Cross) construct a new superhero – only to find that he’d rather dominate human kind – rather than save the world.
As directed by Madagascar’s Tom McGrath, Megamind is fun, even if the 3D, like so much 3D work of late, seems underused and redundant. McGrath keeps it moving, but he can’t really do much with the material, which is locked into a gaggy TV sketch-com boilerplate; it feels seen-before, routine and a bit smugly would-be cool in a way that, say, Rocky and Bullwinkle never was.
