MegaMind review

 Number 990 on the top 1000 films of all time is the animated superhero comedy 'Megamind.'

Megamind (Will Ferrell) is a supervillain in Metro City. He has a fierce rivalry with super hero Metro Man (Brad Pitt.) However, after Megamind seemingly kills Metro Man, he feels lost and powerless. That is until he creates a new super hero. But this super hero quickly becomes a villain which Megamind must beat to save Metro City.

I totally see what this film was going for. It's trying to be a clever re-invention of the superhero genre. But a parody of a cliche is still a cliche. Megamind pointed out plenty of the cliches present within the superhero genre, but instead of subverting them like arguably better film, it tries to put a funny spin on them and fails miserably. Like many superhero films, Metro Man and Megamind have a big dialogue in the build-up to their final confrontation. Yet this dialogue gets progressively sillier and it adds nothing to the overall plot.

That's also a prime example of the film's poor attempts at humour. Many of the jokes fell completely flat and Will Ferrell's lacklustre performance did nothing to help things. He tried doing an imitation of Vito Corleone in the Godfather, and it was one of the worse imitations I've ever heard. Brad Pitt was was surprisingly uncharismatic as Metro Man.

Megamind and Metro Man are in themselves parodies of Superman - both are alien refugees sent to earth as their own planet is sucked into a black hole. Metro Man is handsome and popular at school, while Megamind is ugly and bullied. He goes onto begin resenting Metro Man before fully embracing his role as a supervillain. 

And that's largely all I can remember from this film, as I kept falling asleep. I wouldn't even say it was a kid's film, because I don't think it would be that entertaining for children to watch. Or for anybody to watch for that matter.

A Beautiful Mind review

 Number 191 on the top 1000 films of all time is Ron Howard's 2001 Life is Beautiful. I'm going slightly out of order, as I had the chance to watch this on Netflix.

Based on the true story, John Nash is a brilliant mathematician and student at Princeton. However, his life begins to unravel when he starts suffering from schizophrenic episodes and hallucinations. Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Anthony Rapp, Adam Goldberg and Christopher Plummer all co-start.

I have to admit that I'm very conflicted about this film. I can see why it was so popular, with John Nash very much fulfilling the 'Overcoming the Monster' storyline. He is the likable if awkward nerd who beats his own demons to become a success, but the film wasn't for me. And maybe that's because John Nash isn't as likable as you might think. Not at first anyway. And that's down to Akiva Goldman's writing and Ron Howard's direction.

In the first act, we're introduced to John Nash and his intellectual chums as they engage in petty games to prove who's the cleverest. However, all this did was portray them as the prototypical, arrogant nerds. While there is some truth behind the stereotype, it doesn't serve to make the characters anymore likable.

This set-up consumes a good portion of the film and, by the time, we've reached the meat and bones of the film, I had almost lost interest. And if I had I would have missed a very intense second act. Nash is recruited into MIT where he is made to do trivial work that is beneath his huge intelligence. This is when William Parcher (Ed Harris) recruits him to do top-secret research for the Ministry of Defence. But, plot twist, Parcher as well as Nash's best friend and ex-roommate Charles Herman (Paul Bettany) are only hallucinations. Here we see Nash undergo severe psychiatric treatment such as ECT (how this was ever a thing, I'll never understand) until he finally accepts the reality of his situation.

This is where we see Nash at his most human rather than as the archetypal, arrogant nerd. Jennifer Connelly was great as Nash's wife, Alicia. She suffered mentally and physically all due to Nash's hallucinations. I wish the film spent more on the middle section, but as it spent too long on the set-up, it had to rush through the rest of the film.

Also, is it me or as Russell Crowe bad at doing accent? Whether it's as Robin Hood or John Nash, his accents are less than convincing.

This could have been a very powerful film, but it was let down by poor pacing and a bad structure. But what do I know? Perhaps I'm just another of these self-confessed geniuses criticising something that I don't fully understand.