Movie Reviews - Megamind

I recently had the pleasure of seeing Dreamworks latest animated extravaganza, Megamind starring the voices of Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, Tina Fey and Jonah Hill and written and directed by Tom McGrath, writer and director of Madagascar 1 and 2.

Set for release in Australia on the 9th of December I was lucky enough to get an invite to an advanced screening.

Megamind follows the story of evil genius Megamind (Will Ferrell). A blue skinned, bulbous headed alien who was sent to Metro City as a baby begins a lifelong struggle against the seemingly infallible Metro Man (Brad Pitt). But what happens to a super villain when there's no Hero to battle? Is a Super Villain with no nemesis just a jerk?

I was floored by Dreamworks last animated feature, How to Train Your Dragon, and this film goes one step further. The animation is incredibly crisp and clean with an incredible attention to detail. Small things such as rain running down a characters face and the way that the rain pooled off the camber of the road looked and acted very realistically. When it comes to animation the things that I generally look at in terms of realism are water and hair, these are the two things that are the most difficult to animate. The animators in Megamind seem to use this as a challenge by having a number of close up scenes of wet hair, dry hair, hair in the wind and hair in the midst of explosions! It's getting very hard to comment on the quality of Dreamworks animation apart from just saying "wow".It is truly stunning. The characters, although animated, are able to convey true emotion, so much that at one point my bottom lip actually quivered. The 3D in this film actually made me a bit more hopeful that 3D can be done right. There were no gimmicks or trickery just a great sense of depth which helped to draw me further into the world of Megamind.

The voice work is as great as you'd expect from Ferell, Fey, Pitt, Hill and David Cross. There were some real laugh out loud moments which left me wondering how much of the script was ad libbed, I guess I'll gave to wait for BluRay for those answers.

It always surprises me when I hear people say that they don't enjoy Will Ferrell's work. I understand that they may not enjoy outright dick and fart humour but he has shown his versatility in Elf and Stranger than Fiction. The same can now be said for Megamind. He does a great job of making a thoroughly despicable, evil super genius likeable and most suprisingly, vulnerable.

I don't really need to say anything about the score apart from "Hans Zimmer". Honestly, who would of thought that one of the guys responsible for "Video Killed the Radio Star" would wind up being one of the most in demand, and prolific composers of our generation?

Dreamworks have done something that I never saw coming. They are standing on the winners platform with Pixar. It is seriously neck and neck with these two. These are certainly exciting times for CG animated movies. Megamind was thoroughly enjoyable from beginning to end and is destined to be a hit with the whole family and a sure fire money spinner at the school holiday box office.