Never Mind- MEGAMIND Review

This year, Dreamworks has pumped out three animated films. Of Shrek Forever After, there's really nothing more to say than how samey it was, but the real triumph has been How To Train Your Dragon. The first outright excellent film to come from the company since Shrek, it probably would have won the Best Animated Picture Oscar away from Pixar if it had only come out in the year where they offered Cars 2 instead of the superb Toy Story 3. Somewhere in between Shrek and the dragons, falls Megamind.

The titular blue-bonced supervillain comes from the Superman origin story, jettisoned from an exploding galaxy to Earth by loving parents when he was just a baby. The same applies to his arch-nemesis Metroman, with whom he engages in elaborate battles. He never wins, except for the day that he accidentally does. With Metroman dead, Megamind reevaluates his career in evil and realises that something has to be done to restore the old status quo.

When the origin of your main character is a reference to Superman, you know you're probably in the vicinity of a Dreamworks film. Let's be very clear in stating that the chief difference between the superb How To Train Your Dragon and this more middling effort is that the former was a film made by Dreamworks, and the latter is a Dreamworks film. All of the studio's old tropes are back, and en masse. That same bloody expression with the cocked eyebrow, celebrity voice talents and a faux-Disney "it's what's inside that counts" moral message.

More than that, if you're Dreamworks, it's not the best choice to make a film about the politics of superpowered rivalry, post-Incredibles. Especially when your protagonist is constantly trying to measure up to an enemy who's similar in method and origin and always falls short of beating them. It would seem like a manifestation of the studio's short man syndrome with the almighty Pixar, doing "superheroes" as a theme with more bombast and bravado, but with none of the subtlety or resonance of The Incredibles. It's like making Shark Tale after Finding Nemo. Oh, hang about...

All of this said though, Megamind is far from a waste of time. In the year when Hiccup and Toothless flying through the skies made jaws drop, this one has some incredible action spectacle that really uses the medium to its fullest advantage. There are genuinely creative battles and disasters on show here that would be impossible to realise in live action, even with the greatest special effects available at the moment. You wouldn't want to see them in live-action either, because that's how things like 2012 happen. But in animation, the real highlights of this film are in visual delights such as a huge skyscraper crashing down a street after two characters like an unstoppable locomotive.

I predicted a while back that this film and Despicable Me would turn out as proportionately the exact same story. I was wrong, but the films did level out at around the same level of quality. Both films had fun playing with the technological innovations their hyper-intelligent antiheroes could muster, but both films ended up borrowing a lot from other sources. In the case of Megamind, aside from the Superman allegory that peaks with Will Ferrell doing a killer impression of Marlon Brando as Jor-El, there are a ton of oblique references that go over kids' heads and won't impress adults that much. The post-modern superhero film has actually become hackneyed in itself, over the last year or so, especially when it was clearly done best by Brad Bird, in 2004.

As to the script, it could have used some work. Even without the compulsively spoilerish trailers and clips that have been floating around, the plot is astonishingly predictable. More than that, it's not really that funny. If the film's meant to be a comedy, and it's certainly been marketed as such, it should have made me laugh more. As it was, I found the teaser trailer for Kung Fu Panda 2 to be a funnier watch, before the main feature began. It's more diverting than it is humourous, which is fine if you don't go in expecting a comedy.

On balance, Megamind is more of the same from Dreamworks, and such a mechanical feature that I could probably tell you exactly what the plot of Megamind 2 will be if the numbers add up correctly for Jeffrey Katzenberg to greenlight a sequel. With some promising creative developments at the studio, hopefully this film and next year's trifecta of sequels will be the last of their kind before Dreamworks goes into a period of renaissance. Maybe they'll learn how to animate new facial expressions along the way. But crucially, they just might inject some sense of fun that's sorely been lacking in their last few similar efforts.

Megamind is now showing in 2D and 3D, at cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Megamind, why not share your comments below? If you're wondering what next year's trifecta is, it's Kung Fu Panda 2, Madagascar 3 and Puss In Boots. And all Pixar is offering up is Cars 2. Boy, next year is gonna suck. Except Kung Fu Panda, natch.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

And That's Funny, Right?!- THE OTHER GUYS Review

Did you lose your job during the recession? Has your credit rating plummeted? Then you know there has to be comedy in that, right? Right?! This is the pandering central conceit of The Other Guys, from the creative team behind Anchorman. After a blistering action-packed opening starring Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, we're introduced to the titular other guys, played by Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg.

Pen-pusher Allen Gamble and disgraced detective Terry Hoitz get their big chance to go up in the world when they stumble upon evidence of a Ponzi scheme orchestrated by a devious CEO. Working around the fact that they're utterly incompetent and have to have their balls busted every other day by their long-suffering boss, they go on a journey of... oh, look, it's just a buddy cop comedy, right?

Let me remind you of a film that limped in and out of UK cinemas earlier this year. It was called Cop Out, and people seemed to hate it. As a big Kevin Smith fan, it disappointed me- I found it to be lacking in his usual earnestness and humour, muddled in the plot department and all in all, it felt way too self-indulgent. I'm baffled by all the great reviews The Other Guys is getting, because the difference between Smith's film and Adam McKay's film is six of one and half a dozen of the other.

If anything, the plot in this is even more muddled than Cop Out. While that one at least had some motivation for our protagonists, this is merely a series of comedy sketches strung together by some vague political implications. It's like the filmmakers are breaking the fourth wall and saying "Will Ferrell is a geeky cop! And that's funny, right?!" Sadly, the answer is mostly no! I like Ferrell, but so much of his ad-libbing here utterly missed the mark for me.

Luckily, he's played against Mark Wahlberg, a natural comedy actor, as anybody who has seen The Happening will testify. His infuriated yelling for Ferrell to shut up is often a lot funnier than whatever tangent Ferrell is off on. They at least have a decent dynamic going, and I'd happily have watched any number of short sketches with them riffing on one another. The plot in this one just doesn't work, and it drags the film out to 107 minutes. Not a long film, but a film that feels really, really long.

It does have more than a few belly-laughs, an area in which Cop Out was definitely lacking, but come on! This one's surely only getting such a good buzz because of the goodwill towards Ferrell and McKay. This is by far the weakest film they've made together- I enjoyed Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Step Brothers and so my expectations were high. Were they met? Fuck no!

Individual elements of it are great, but I wanted to see most of those elements more than we saw Will Ferrell. Exempt from that are Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson, whose extended cameos are the most perfectly pitched comedic roles the film has to offer. Also, Steve Coogan- either he doesn't ad-lib well or they just gave his character really crappy dialogue. But I'd happily have seen more of Michael Keaton or Eva Mendes, dammit!

The Other Guys is a film that almost felt calculated to alienate me as it went along. I laughed a lot in the first half hour, but that's not enough to give the whole film a pass. It's only sporadically funny and sadly more concerned with throwing in Blues Brothers style car chases than being consistent and coherent. Wait until DVD if you're a fan of Ferrell. If you're not, then don't watch Cop Out either, but to those trumpeting this as the second coming, they're both different shades of the same disappointing colour.

The Other Guys is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen The Other Guys, why not share your comments below? Incidentally, even though I like Step Brothers, I'm going to slap the next person who yells "It's the fuckin' Catalina wine-mixer" in public. Unless we're actually at the Catalina wine-mixer. Which seems unlikely.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.