A villain needs a hero

Rating: 8/10 (25 January 2017)

One day two alien babies were sent to Earth; one landed in a wealthy household, developed superpowers and grew up to be the superhero Metro Man; the other landed in prison, developed a powerful mind and grew up to become the supervillain Megamind this film follows the latter. The two are rivals; Megamind plots his schemes against Metro City and Metro Man thwarts them and sends him to prison. Then one day Megamind kidnaps reporter Roxanne Ritchie, who everybody believes is Metro Man's girlfriend, and waits for him to try to rescue her. He manages to captures Metro Man and fires his death ray at him knowing he will escape only he doesn't. While using a disguise he rescues Roxanne and the two grow close; until she realises who he is. He soon realises that without a hero to fight against his life has no meaning. To solve this problem he sets about creating another hero with Metro Man's powers; unfortunately the wrong man gets the powers and Metro City ends up with a much more unpleasant villain: Titan. With a new villain in town Megamind will have to change; he will have to become a hero then maybe he will win and even get the girl.
This movie turned out to be a lot of fun; there are so many films centred on the superhero so it made a refreshing change have one that followed the villain. The early scenes played with the genre clichés in an enjoyable way that led up to the genuinely surprising 'death' of Metro Man. It later emerges that he isn't dead but not for quite a while. The main characters were fun; Megamind is suitably dastardly without actually being malicious; Metro Man is sickeningly perfect and Roxanne is feisty and avoids many of the character traits we would expect; notably her not being romantically interested in Metro Man. Titan is a decent enough bad guy; he is clearly not very bright and emotionally backward. The character designs are good, the animation is of a high standard and the voice cast do a fine job of bringing them to life. Overall I'd recommend this to anybody looking for an animation that can be enjoyed by all ages.