Turning superhero clichés on their heads

Rating: 8/10 (24 November 2010)

This is one of DreamWorks' best animated movies, largely because it makes a point of turning clichés on their heads, and then following the twists through to fruition.
Plus: Nicely paced - it never stalls and never zips ahead too fast to follow. The parts that were slow on action carried enough thought and depth to keep them satisfying.
Minus: As usual, DreamWorks just insists on cluttering a nice fantasy milieu with American (or at least Western) culture-specific (former Top 10 rock) music. This is probably my biggest pet peeve about their films: If you're going to make up a fantasy world, bloody do the whole job - don't cheap-out and go for the easy/lazy references as a substitute for real original contextual humor. The audience is smarter than that. (That said, this was the biggest minus for me, and at least Mr. Blue Sky was an apt choice in context.) Plus: The voice-work was great. I'm bad at matching voices to the stars, but even so, none of these sounded distractingly familiar. That made it easy to just believe the characters - and sympathize with them. And the dialog is tight, nicely concise and not flaccidly jokey - MegaMind drills right down to his real existential crisis succinctly and clearly. (And no Eddie Murphy improvisation.) Plus: The 3D effects were effective and not overbearing.
Plus: Megamind himself doesn't have any real superhuman powers - no especially superhuman strength, no ability to fly, no x-ray vision - and his only personal asset of maybe super-intelligence is flawed enough (pronunciation being a real stumbling block, and later there's the musical taste issue) to be interesting and to still allow tension between his ambitions and his opponents. But, his gadgets and devices are cool and clever, and make for some nice plot twists - for example, his "wristwatch" that allows him to take the appearance of anyone he's had the chance to "record" not only gives him a great power of disguise/deceit, but also gets him into a position to learn and seeds his personal growth. And, the de-hydration ray gets rid of inconveniences minor and major in a temporary way, allowing for them to rehydrate/reappear later in surprising ways; this device also plays a key part in possibly the cleverest MegaMind trick in the film. It's all part of the presentation, which is after all the difference between villains and SUPER villains.
Plus: Minion is an unusual and interesting minion; MetroMan (do I detect a tongue-in-cheek hint that he's sort of Metro-sexualMan? with the impeccably coiffed hair, perfect teeth and manicure? Certainly, when it's revealed that he faked his own demise to get away from the routine and the pressure, he's slacked off in the appropriate ways, letting his stubble grow and dressing a bit down) is just odd enough as a superhero to defy predictability - what other superhero has just up and quit the game? Sure, others have had crises of purpose, but not taken it in the direction MetroMan did.
Plus: The main thing that won me over is that the movie really drew me in and kept me wanting to know what would happen next - and made me care about the characters enough to root for them, even if the suspense wasn't especially deep - I never really thought things wouldn't turn out happy in the end.