Magamind, a children's movie with an unexpected twist.

 
04.12.2010
Everyone should watch “Megamind”, the new Dreamworks’ film, directed by Tom McGrath and written by Alan J. Schoolcraft & Brent Simons.
The plot is impressively original and profound, something the trailer very wisely avoid to show, maybe not not spoil the ‘surprise’, or maybe not to put off some people who might think the film is too serious and intelligent for their ‘miniminds’, if you know what I mean.
As in every respectable story for children, we have a villain, Megamind (Will Ferrel), a blue guy with an enormous head, and his super-heroic opponent, the muscular, popular, handsome Metroman (Brad Pitt).
They both come from another planet: their worlds were sucked into a black hole and, to save their helpless children, their parents sent each of them Earth.
One lands in a wealthy mansion; he would be cheered and loved, and would grow up to the superhero Metro Man. The other lands in a prison; misunderstood and maltreated despite his best efforts, he is classed as a villain and would go on to become the criminal Megamind.
Metroman, like Superman, has acquired all sort of Superman-like superpowers, while Megamind is only, well, clever and ‘evil’, I would say.
As in every respectable story for children, they fight a never-ending battle, where Megamind thinks up a number of evil plots to conquer Metrocity, engaging every time an epic final battle with Metroman, who almost always wins.
I say ‘almost’, since there is in fact one occasion in which Megamind manages to win, killing his long-term opponent and finally becoming the Lord of Metrocity. He has finally made it, he actually won! The only problem is: now what?
Once the initial euphoria has passed, our hero, oops, our villain doesn’t know what to do next. He has no purpose any more, no one he can fight, no one he can exchange witty jokes with. He actually misses Metroman!
He feels truly miserable, so he decides to create his own opponent, a tailor-made superhero made contaminating the average Joe with Metroman’s powerful DNA. Problem is that, like in all his previous plans, things go wrong and he unfortunately contaminates the worse ‘average Joe’, he could find: Hal Steward (Jonah Hill), a selfish cameraman, a nerd who wants to become a hero to ‘get the girl’, girl who happens to be the brave reporter Roxanne (Tina Fey), whom Megamind is in the meantime dating, disguised as the intellectual Bernardo (Ben Stiller). Confused? Well, I cannot blame you; as I have said at the beginning of this review, this isn’t just an action movie for children, where reality is only black or white, we have some depth here people, we’re really getting to the heart of the matter.
Contrary to every reasonable expectations, Megamind gradually falls for Stacy and gradually becomes a better person, someone who, maybe, “doesn’t want to be the bad guy any more”, as he explains to his assistant and best (and unique) friend Minion, a talking fish who operates a gorilla’s body from an helmet filled with water.
Unfortunately, the ‘hero’ he has created soon becomes a super-villain, since Hal gets a big head and decides to use his new powers for his own selfish purposes.
Everything seems lost, when… Something happens. A nice twist in the plot. And then another one.
We learn not to take anything for granted and that people aren’t necessary the way they look.
Gleefully subverting the standard good vs evil, while delivering an eye-popping adventure with characters you can really root for, Megamind is simply super.