Our mission – to take a 2 year 9 month old to his first ever film at the cinema. Stage 1 was to ensure we left on time. We failed, due to “the floors needing cleaned”.
Women. *tut*
After a hasty reschedule, we changed cinema and ended up at the Showcase in Paisley to see Megamind with Austin (2 years 9 months), Ellissa (9 years 9 months) and Louise (9 years 6 months). Oh, and two old fogies.
Megamind
“Good is the path of honour, friends and family. Evil… well, it’s just cooler.”
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Two aliens arrive on earth as babies. One goes on to be a superhero, the other has less luck and becomes his arch enemy. This… is their story.
The first films that come to mind when looking at the plot of Megamind are The Incredibles and Despicable Me. This new offering, though, is different enough from the two of them to be worth seeing in its own right.
Lookswise, it’s very much along the lines we’re used to from DreamWorks. All curvy and shiny and very cartoony. Nothing wrong with this, but it would be nice if they tried something new the way Pixar do with each film.
The story is good, though, and the trailer doesn’t give much away. This is something that virtually every film studio could learn from. Only a couple of early scenes are covered, so the rest of the plot and jokes are fresh and enjoyable when you see them in the full feature.
It’s fun. It’s got quite a few nods to established superhero history as well – good luck spotting them! There’s not a huge amount of background stuff compared to its peers, but the dialogue and voice acting is top notch with comic timing as good as it gets.
Gill and I both agreed that it was better than we expected. The two girls were enraptured for the whole length.
And Austin? He got a little restless about half way through and chucked two Toy Story dolls and a shoe into the next row in front (thankfully empty). However, he spent most of the time watching the film, although a fair amount of that was stood up with his head pushed between the chairs in front.
I’m taking that as a “recommended”.
Related articles
- Trailer: Megamind Keeps the Wisecracks Coming (wired.com)
- Movie Review: Megamind (2010) (carefuleugene.blogspot.com)
- Film: Review: Megamind (avclub.com)
- Megamind (PG) (independent.co.uk)
- Review: Megamind (cbc.ca)
- Megamind, review (telegraph.co.uk)
- Megamind Movie Review – Unexpected Originality (screenhead.com)
- Megamind – review (guardian.co.uk)