BEFORE: Today I offer a rare glimpse behind the scenes of the Movie Year Project - though, at the rate things are going, I may come to regret that name, as it turns into the Half-Decade Project. I've had to put in some time visiting doctors lately to keep myself healthy, because, well, if I'm not feeling up to snuff the whole process just sort of collapses. Anything that's been bothering me physically, I've tried to see someone about (preferably someone with a license and a white coat) - so in the last few weeks, I've been diagnosed with gastritis, a spastic colon, and a seriously ingrown toenail. The colon thing is not as disgusting as it sounds, it's really just a twinge in my intestine, which felt like a repeated stitch in my side, but since it was constant I figured it was worth a look-see. Now I'm on three meds (all of which seem to have the same side effect, dry mouth) and I really, really should not be operating any heavy machinery in the near future.
I think part of the appeal of superheroes is that they are double-invulnerable - they don't age like regular people, and they tend to never get sick. You might see Peter Parker with a slight cold, but that's it. And if one should die, you can be fairly confident the next writer will find a way to bring them back, or if all else fails, they just re-boot the series from Day One, as DC Comics recently did, to keep the characters young and healthy. By contrast, I'm now 43 and I'm falling apart, piece by piece.
Anyway, linking from "X-Men: First Class", Rose Byrne was also in "Get Him to the Greek" (it's on the list) with Jonah Hill (last seen in "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian"), who appears here.
THE PLOT: The supervillain Megamind finally defeats his nemesis, the superhero Metro Man. But without a hero, he loses all purpose and must find new meaning to his life.
AFTER: This is a clever spin on the superhero/super-villain dynamic, specifically it seems to reference Superman and a combination of Lex Luthor and Brainiac. The set-up is that not one but TWO babies are sent rocketing to Earth from dying worlds, and one lands in a good place, the other one, not so much.
Metro Man and Megamind grow up with parallel lives, but one's on the hero track and the other, shunned by society and appearing less human, becomes his arch-nemesis. Megamind finds that the only thing he's good at is failing, so he assumes that it's his destiny to be evil. But just when you think you know where the story might be headed, they spin it around, in much the same way that "Shrek" up-ended the classic fairy tales.
How does a villain react when his hero rival is gone? Who fills the vacuum left behind by a fallen hero? What is Lex Luthor without Superman, what is the Joker without Batman? Do the two archetypes define each other, can one survive without the other? Seriously, how long before a villain looks at a superhero and says, "Wait, haven't we done this before? How do we break this crazy cycle?"
Megamind's plan is to try and get things back to the way they were, creating a new hero to fill Metro Man's shoes, so he can get back to kidnapping the reporter, Roxanne Ritchie (the Lois Lane stand-in). But then the movie turns things around again, in ways that are too good to reveal here. Let's just say that Megamind fails upwards for once and gets to see what life is like on the other side of the equation.
This also works as a parody of over-bloated, self-important super-hero films, like, oh, let's say "Superman IV". A lot of the humor similarly depends on mistaken identity - Megamind has a watch that allows him to holographically change his appearance, and this got a tiny bit over-used and confusing. At one point Megamind was playing himself AND two other characters, making a lot of excuses about why he needed to leave the room, so he could come back in as someone else.
My only other complaint is about the music cues - there's not one here that hasn't been used in about 100 other films. Plus it drew heavily from classic rock, which normally is a good thing, but I think they were trying to appeal to younger viewers, and most of the kids today don't know "Crazy Train" or "Mr. Blue Sky". I wish I had a nickel for every time "Back in Black", "Highway to Hell" or "Welcome to the Jungle" were used in a film - really, they were used as shortcuts here, and that's just plain lazy.
Still, apart from the overused music, this was a whole lot of fun. And a desperately needed parody of a genre that was in danger of becoming a parody of itself. So kudos.
Also starring the voices of Will Ferrell (last seen in "The Other Guys"), Tina Fey (last seen in "The Invention of Lying"), Brad Pitt (last seen in "Babel"), David Cross, Ben Stiller ("Night at the Museum"), and J.K. Simmons (last seen in "Autumn in New York").
RATING: 8 out of 10 evil plans
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