MEGAMIND (a review)

MEGAMIND (a review)

This is the second of two recent animated super-villain movies. The first was DESPICABLE ME (reviewed HERE) which featured Steve Carrell as the main villain. This one features the voice work of Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jonah Hill, and Brad Pitt.

The story: Megamind, the arch-villain of Metro Man, is in jail but he breaks out and is able to finally defeat Metro Man and take over the city. Except then he becomes bored. He realizes he needs a hero to fight, so he decides to create a superhero, Tighten, except that superhero becomes an even worse supervillain than Megamind. Also, Megamind in disguise begins to date Roxanne, a woman who hates the villainous Megamind. Then to svae the girl he loves Megamind has to become the cities hero and defeat Tighten.

Was it good?

Not really. it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't especially good either. The problem is the core of the story just isn't that compelling. It basically is a guy who gets what he wants and then becomes bored. That's not much of a story. And him falling in love and deciding to become a hero, while okay, isn't real compelling either. Compare that to the much better DESPICABLE ME where a super villain has lost his funding and must try to steal the moon to regain his line of credit, but is thwarted by a more successful supervillain and now must use three orphans to try to defeat this other supervillain. That's a heck of a lot more interesting than just someone trying not to be bored.

As a result just about everything works better in Desp-Me than in Megamind -- the jokes are funnier, the action scenes are more interesting, the characters are more interesting. It all comes from concept and story. The stronger the motivation, the more interesting the heart of the story, the easier it is to get everything else to work around it.

The two things MEGAMIND does have is some first rate animation and great voice work. The animation is fantastic and I'm a big fan of Will Farrell and Tina Fey, even if this isn't their most interesting work.

For adults, there isn't enough here to recommend. For kids, there is probably enough to keep them entertained even if it won't rank as a classic.

*** KIDS -- RECOMMEND, ADULTS -- RENTAL ****

Still the animation is first rate and I'm a fan of

THE OTHER GUYS (a review)

THE OTHER GUYS (a review)

A comedy starring Will Farrell and Mark Wahlberg about two cops who try to take over for a pair of daring hero cops who get killed. Also stars Dwayne Johnson (the Rock), Samuel Jackson, Eva Mendes and Michael Keaton.

The story: two hero cops get killed chasing bad guys and two other cops (Farrell and Wahlberg), one of whom wants to be a hero cop and the other who is happy doing paperwork, try to step up and stop a major crime. Sort of.

Was it good?

YES.

I know I'm not explaining it well, but this movie is a little more odd, then a similar movie COP OUT(Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, directed by Kevin Smith) and between the two this is a much better movie -- it's bigger and weirder and funnier. At the same time it's harder to explain because because the crime they are foiling is a little weird and they come at it in a very strange way. You see there's this guy who lost a lot of money -- like a couple hundred Billion -- and so he's going to pull this scam to try to get it back. Except the cops don't know anything about it. In fact, Farrell's character arrests him for some permit violations, except then these guys steal him back right out of police custody which leads them to think something is up, but they don't figure it out until the end.

So it's a police movie where it isn't clear who the bad guy is or what's going on or even if there is really a crime for most of the movie. But it still works. And the reason it works is because it's funny. It's funny the way COP OUT wanted to be, with all the weird antics of the cops and all the strange and funny dialog. Plus this movie has this nice twist that it starts out with two other hero cops who pull the kind of ridiculous over the top stunts you only see in movies, and then when they are killed our two protagonists struggle to become the next hero cops. It's better because one of them wants to be a hero and the other doesn't, but then of course learns to embrace his crazy hero side too.

I liked COP OUT. But I liked THE OTHER GUYS a lot more. A LOT MORE.

**** RECOMMEND ****