Certificate: U, 90 mins. Approx - Illumination Entertainment.
Starring: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Trey Parker, Jenny Slate, Steve Coogan and Julie Andrews.
In 2010, two ostensibly similar computer-animations were released, less than six months apart. One was Despicable Me, a colourful, family-freindly, bubblegum-plastic, synergy-tied confection of super-villainy turned good.
The other was DreamWorks’s Megamind, a florescence-filled delight of heroics, colour, and super-villainy turned…well, you get the very cynicism-orientated idea by now, I’m sure…
But my cynicism is well-placed - never more so than here - in this heavy, languid, broadly-bogged-down third installment. The first song used lazily here - Micheal Jackson’s Bad - is in fact the last one used in Megamind, and to much the same effect - though it’s not nearly as charming.
From here on in the narrative and stylistic similarity is so shamelessly staggering - I’m surprised DreamWorks don’t sue - I’m sure they’d have a good case. The main difference being of course, that where Megamind was funny, inventive and light as the frothiest soufflé, this feels increasingly tired and lumpen, a formula cooked up in those perpetually endless metallic corridors these characters are forever running down.
This is a polarising opinion, but I just don’t find those awful yellow minions the slightest bit funny. Like the worst kind of hyperactive offspring, they never shut up! Not that this bothered the many delighted faces in my screening. Never before have I seen so many children so easily and simultainiously pleased, with every flatulence-gun fired or raspberry blown. I suppose the intention was to hark back to a cross between The Marx Bros. and Bananas in Pajarmas - if so, the filmmakers missed the mark widely.
What works far better is the much needed lightness-of-touch from Pharrell Williams. Making everybody ‘Happy’ back in 2013, and ‘Frozen-out’ to an Oscar - (maybe he’s Let It Go) - he’s back here, with songs that cleverly help reference a slew of other films. His infectious anthem ‘Freedom’ is a great ode to The Shawshank Redemption - as well as an America’s Got Talent style sing-off of The Periodic Table Song. (It’s same studio that made Sing - infinitely better). Good performances from Kristen Wiig, Jenny Slate and Julie Andrews, can’t save it from its own gloopy brand of unoriginality.
Rating: * *
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