Moderately sized mind

Rating: 4/10 (7 January 2011)

This film is 1/3 a great movie, 1/3 a decent flick that could make for at least a decent studio filler before Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda 2, and 1/3 a boring snoozefest that was definitely not worth catching a 9 PM screening of. Maybe Dreamworks is starting to run out of original ideas- it seems to be their best animated stuff is adaptations- Shrek, How To Train Your Dragon, etc. Not to say I didn't like Monsters Vs. Aliens or Kung Fu Panda, but I feel as if when they derive, they are in their own little league.
I saw the trailer with Toy Story 3. It looked like a good movie- Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, etc. That, plus its concept of a deconstruction of superhero movie seemed funny, except I already saw that 3 months beforehand when I went and saw Despicable Me 3D. Nonetheless I chose to ignore the warning signs and went in.
The movie was working for 20 minutes. Especially in its opening scenes, with how we're introduced to how Megamind is apparently having the worst day of his life, as he is falling to his death. I will admit I laughed at the "Aw, a baby! How flattering." line, the childhood was cute, and I was just generally loving it.
Then the second act came, where Megamind was bored because he's officially defeated Metro Man and there's nothing to do. That's quite symbolic because not a lot happens (at least that I am able to remember for the life of me) happens in this period of time, except for Megamind posing as a janitor and falling in love with Tina Fey. This is where the film nearly made me fall asleep. At that point, I started worrying and kept thinking "Who approved of this deft, uneven script?" However, the last 10 minutes is where the film started to feel like it found its niche and at least passed for an entertaining action packed finale. It's like, there's a good 20 minutes of brilliance, an hour of boring filler, then 10 minutes of the brilliance that got the film off to a good start. As satisfied as I was that the film had a good last 10 minutes, 30 minutes out of 90 doesn't a good film make.
It just seems like Dreamworks thought that they hit their mark with the stellar How To Train Your Dragon, found Universal was producing Despicable Me while someone had The Incredibles playing in the background and thought "OMG GUYS. UNIVERSAL HAS A SWEET CONCEPT. LET'S SEE IF WE CAN DO IT AND RISE TO THEIR LEVEL OF Brilliance. OH AND LET'S BRING IN SOME STUFF FROM THE INCREDIBLES!!!" I crap you not. I got reminded several times of Despicable Me and The Incredibles, which is not a good thing. It just shows that they felt like they needed more money, so after doing what was said above, they'd release it as a sort of filler flick for their paychecks before KFP2 came out. Because they've gotta keep bringing in bucks by the buckets somehow. It also doesn't help that the equally mediocre Shrek Forever After had the same feel, despite being better than Shrek 3.
To be fair, a lot of the movie has a "going through the motions" feel to it. It seems like the writers got really lazy halfway into writing and went, "Hey, we released a real sleeper hit this year!!! No need to be creative or make sure people find the jokes funny, we can turn our grocery shopping lists into a 3D movie and it'd be a smash!!!". None of the jokes seem fresh. The plot seems bored and done a million times before. It just feels done, and I could have spent my money elsewhere.
In short, Megamind is really just a boring movie, obviously released so Dreamworks can get more money. It just feels flat, tired, bored, done a million times before and even beautiful animation/good 3D cannot save this film from being the boring, convoluted mess it is. Skip it.
Well, Pixar, it's safe to say you don't have to worry about your jobs anymore.