Despicable Me...gamind (Megamind Review)

There are certain advantages to going and seeing a lesser movie while the blockbuster of the year is enjoying its opening weekend.  While everyone and their mother (including mine) went out to see Harry Potter 7.1, I snuck quietly past the lines of wand-waving, faux-Latin-screaming children in a way that felt downright criminal and found myself sitting happily with a small crowd inside the building's only theater not designated to a nearly-three-hour tour of England to watch Megamind, the latest from Dreamworks' animation studios.  I'll be honest with you: I wasn't really looking forward to watching Megamind.  In fact, had I not previewed it back in May or whenever the hell that was and made the rash decision to try my darndest to see each and every movie on said list, I don't think I would be seeing it now.  I am happy to report, then, that it exceeded my expectations and in fact is one of the better animated films of this year.

Megamind's biggest flaw is that it came out in the same year as Despicable Me, 2010's other bad-guy-turns-good-animated-film-starring-one-of-Channel 4's-newsteam-from-Anchorman, and a mere two weeks before Harry Potter and the Abandonment of Hogwarts.  Despicable Me and Megamind will naturally draw comparisons to each other, much as A Bug's Life and Antz did oh so long ago or when an excess of disaster movies (most notably Independence Day in 1996, Dante's Peak and Volcano, both of 1997, and Armageddon and Deep Impact in 1998) seemed to follow one after another with a reckless abandon that suggested Hollywood's takeover by overly-hopeful end-times fanatics.  Megamind and Despicable Me do share the same basic shell of a plot: evil mastermind slowly but surely turns to the path of goodness in order to save the day.  Gru of Despicable Me has a heavy foreign accent; Megamind of... Megamind... is from another planet entirely.  Gru has hundreds of pint-sized yellow minions that squeak and mumble in gibberish; Megamind has hundreds of pint-sized flying "brainbots" that beep and whistle in gibberish.  Gru's main henchman is an old scientist voiced by Russell Brand; Megamind's main henchman is a fish in a robot suit voiced by David Cross.

From there, though, the similarities largely end.  If you go through and watch all of Megamind's trailers, about 95% of what you see happens in the first 20 minutes.  The film is kicked off nicely by a shot of Megamind himself falling to his death and thus giving him the excuse to essentially narrate his "life flashing before his eyes" that will, by the end of the movie, lead right back to him falling from hundreds of stories up.  He describes his Superman-style childhood (the idea for the film DID come from the question "What if Lex Luthor beat Superman?"), where his parents tell him he's "destined for ----" (his capsule shuts before he hears the rest).  At the same time, another child from the same system is sent to Earth along with him: Metro Man.  They crashland on Earth - Metro Man sliding through the front doors of a mansion, Megamind plopping down in the exercise yard of a "prison for the gifted" (run, I would imagine, by a bald guy in a wheelchair) - and their lives clash and intersect constantly from there.  Megamind turns to evil not so much because he himself is evil but because circumstances turn him towards it.  His main purpose is to serve as the evil foil to Metro Man's good.  This quick summation of their history together leads straight to the film's catalyst sequence in which Megamind traps Metro Man and blows the superhero to smithereens with a death ray.  The bad guy wins.  Megamind takes over the city and runs rampant through the streets.

And suddenly, Megamind finds he has no purpose.

I won't spoil any more for you (though everything I just said basically IS the trailer), but from here on out, the film takes some great twists and turns that, while you can pretty much guess the end result, keeps you highly entertained and even manages to throw some morals at you that were really quite touching.  Will Ferrel is one of those actors that I simply cannot figure out: in short bursts (like trailers), he can be pretty annoying, and yet I enjoy most of the films in which he stars.  He was certainly the best part of The Other Guys, and Elf, and he would have done the same for Anchorman had Steve Carell never been born.  There are just little things that Ferrel does, little inflections in his voice, or (for live-action films) facial expressions that he slips in, that just work, and it's the same for Megamind, like a running gag in which Megamind constantly mispronounces the city's name (rather than call it "Metro City", he blends the two words into one that rhymes with "velocity").  Let me clarify by saying that this film is anything but gutbustingly funny the whole way through; instead, it's a solid family adventure with clever writing worthy of the titular character's name.  The action sequences had me on the edge of my seat staring wide-eyed just as the trio of small children in the row in front of me (thank you, Gullermo Del Toro, who apparently offered his artistic services for making the action more exciting), and Megamind himself made for an engaging, sympathetic character that I don't feel is too often seen in any film nowadays.  He has a depth to him that I was not expecting, and his growth - not the action scenes, not the humor - was the true highlight of the film.

So go out and give Megamind a shot.  The competition for its main demographic will be spending the next several weeks utterly dominating the box office, so if you want to avoid the ridiculous lines awaiting you at any and all Harry Potter showings, go see this instead, but try to find it in 2D.  My theater was only showing in 3D, and I am dead certain that some scenes - the action scenes at that! - weren't even IN 3D.  Total waste of the extra $3.  I could have used that money to buy a small popcorn, or a single Reece's cup, or about half a fountain drink.  Sheesh.

300 Happy Feet! (Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole Review)

Sometimes, I just don't know what studio executives are thinking.  When given the idea to turn a children's book series that isn't even very popular into a CG film, when exactly was it that someone said, "Hey, I know just the guy to direct this.  Did you ever see 300?  Zack Snyder would be perfect!"  I have a feeling that these were the same executives who thought that that getting M. Night Shyamalan for this summer's atrocious The Last Airbender would be a stroke of brilliance.  That all being said, Snyder was actually a very good choice for The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole.  I just kept waiting for Soren, the main owl, to scream "THIS! IS! GA'HOOLE!"

The reason that Zack Snyder makes for a surprisingly good director for a children's film is that Legend of the Guardians is unexpectedly dark, and not just because Snyder directed it.  The Legend of the Guardians revolves around Soren, a naive young owl who gets kidnapped and taken to an orphanage/mine where "inferior" owls are brainwashed and used as slaves.  Though he is of the "superior" race of owls, Soren is utterly repulsed, and he wants nothing to do with the place.  He eventually escapes, befriends some unlikely misfits, and goes out in search for the legendary owls of Ga'Hoole so that they can help destroy this mine and the evil owls heading it.  Honestly, I don't know what I would have done if I had to market this film.  For all its cuteness (from the studio that brought you Happy Feet!), it is a tale of kidnapping, brainwashing, and enslavement.  Characters die.  Characters are betrayed.  Scary bats make several screechy appearances.  How could you possibly market this film?

Apparently, you can't.  Legend of the Guardians cost an estimated $100,000,000 to produce, and as of the end of October it had only reached about $128,000,000 in total international gross.  So, while it has made some money, I wouldn't expect Warner Brothers to be thinking about a sequel anytime soon (at least, not while it has the Batman and Harry Potter franchises to squeeze).

I may sound harsh on the studio executives, but I really mean it more as a compliment.  I think they took a risk on this film, and for me and my wife, at the very least, it paid off.  We both thought that this was a lovely movie, and to date it is the prettiest thing I've seen in 3D, making it the third film this year that I would recommend for the format (the former two being Resident Evil: Afterlife and Jackass 3D - how's that for company?).  Feathers ruffle, rain drops smack against the owls with small, individual splashes, and the movement of all the animals never feels over-humanized.  3D seems to suit Snyder's stylistic approach; the surreal qualities of both mesh together into something that is, forgive the cliche, greater than the sum of its parts.

While Legend of the Guardians was incessantly pretty, its plot left something to be desired.  My wife read the first book prior to the film's release and said that she only finished it because it was so short.  There is nothing unusual here - boy gets kidnapped, boy meets evil empire, boy escapes with ragtag friends, boy finds rebels, boy fights evil empire - but it's almost as though the film tried to be both cute and dark at the same time, to a mixed effect.  The protagonists were likeable, the antagonists detestable, but nothing really stood out that didn't have to do with the stunning visuals (the whole movie is worth seeing just for the "flying through the storm" sequence).  It's little wonder that the film scored a 50% on Rotten Tomatoes.  Once you peel yourself away from the gorgeous visuals, you're left with a plot that is so middling, so run-of-the-mill, that you cannot help but feel the slump that inevitably follows.  Hey, that sounds an awful lot like Avatar, doesn't it?  Legend of the Guardians was far prettier, though, and it only cost a third of Avatar's budget, so as far as I'm concerned, the owls beat the blue kitties, hands (wings, paws, whatever) down.

There are 15-20 books in the series (depending on whether or not you count "The Lost Tales" or the "Wolves of the Beyond" trilogy), and the movie covers the first three or so, leaving the studio plenty of room for sequels if it so wishes.  I have no earthly idea what they'll do, but I would not be even remotely surprised if they followed in the path of 2007's super-blah The Golden Compass and simply decided not to try for another.

The Watching Dead (Resident Evil: Afterlife Review)

Quick Author's Note:

If you're wondering where the hell all the posts have gone lately, well, my laptop is broken..  Fried motherboard.  Dude, I got a Dell.  Anyway, while it's getting fixed, I have to do posts by stealing my wife's Mac and writing on that, which I only like to do if she's not around, like right now.  Hopefully I'll get the stupid thing back within the next week.  You'll know when I do by the sudden flood of totally awesome posts.  I suppose it's ironic that I would write this particular post while my laptop is dead...

Now, on with our show.

I've said over and over on this blog that 3D technology in movies has got to be one of the most useless inventions in recent cinema, possibly in ALL of cinema.  It can be entertaining when the film caters to it, like the 3D Muppet show at MGM Studios in Disney World - where Fozzie creates a remote-controlled flying pie that appears to soar out over the audience - but for your typical movie that doesn't involve thirty things flying at your face in every scene, I have yet to see it add anything but $3 to your already-expensive ticket price.  I had thought it dead for years, but James Cameron's Avatar brought about this year's obnoxious revival, and in 2010 alone I have seen more films in 3D than I have in the rest of my life combined.  Avatar was a visual feast for sure, but that was because Cameron and crew had the budget of a small country (around $310,000,000, to be exact) to make their excess of CGI look as real as possible.  Even then, it just looked like expensive CGI.  The 3D only served to help propel the film's earnings past all others that came before it.  I honestly wonder how much it would have made if it hadn't come out in 3D.

 

Would you believe me, then, if I said that Resident Evil: Afterlife is the first movie I've seen where 3D actually added something to the experience?

 

If you're unfamiliar with Resident Evil, then let me sum things up for you.  An evil corporation (Umbrella, named of course after the popular Rihanna song) unleashes a virus upon the world that turns most of the human population into a mass of mindless zombies.  They have also created a sort of prototype-human named Alice (Milla Jovovich), who turns on them and fights for what's left of humanity.  After three films, Alice has taken out several Umbrella compounds, made a few friends (and lost even more), and discovered an Umbrella lab dedicated to creating more of her.

 

This is a film series based on a videogame and made for videogame-players (that is, teenage boys).  There's a lot of death, a lot of action, and a lot of Milla Jovovich, along with a handful of masculine men and other attractive ladies.  In Resident Evil: Afterlife, Alice trails a radio signal to Alaska, where supposedly there lies a zombie-free encmapment of humans.  But when she arrives, all she finds is Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), her friend from the previous film, and Claire is not at all well.  Her mind has been scrambled by an Umbrella machine, but Alice takes her down the coast to Los Angeles anyway.  I forget why, but it doesn't really matter.  There's zombies need killin', and peoples need savin'.  Alice lands her plane spectacularly on the roof of a prison where a few stragglers have taken up residence.  Naturally, things go from bad to worse almost as soon as she arrives, and suddenly it's a race to escape that very few of the living will survive.

 

When I came out of this film, I had the odd realization that I had absolutely no idea what to say for this blog, no opinion whatsoever.  It wasn't a good movie, but it wasn't bad, either.  I was entertained, but only just.  Characters died in remarkably unremarkable fashions.  Zombies popped out and threw/spat things toward the 3D camera.  Horror/thriller films, I am convinced, are the only ones worth seeing in 3D right now.  When the Axman threw his enormous blade at the camera, you felt like ducking, and when zombies sprang out of nowhere and creepy tentacles sprouted from their mouths, you recoiled.  You would anyway, but the 3D added just a little extra to the experience.  But aside from this, I have nothing to say about Resident Evil: Afterlife.  Nothing.  Go see it if you've seen all the others, I guess.  See it if you like zombies, or Milla Jovovich, or Ali Larter.  Don't bother looking for plot or character development, and don't go if you have a squeemish tummy.  I felt terribly profound and full of myself when I said to someone that, as a film, Resident Evil: Afterlife is undead, just like most of the creatures onscreen.  A live movie tells you something, pulls you in, and leaves you feeling different than when you came in.  A dead movie bores you to tears and makes you feel like demanding for your money back.  This film was neither.  It just existed in a kind of entertainment limbo where you find yourself floating through nothingness, neither bored nor enthralled, until the credits roll.  Then you wake up from your trance and leave the theater feeling exactly as you did going in, only your wallet is somehow missing $12.