► Megamind | B-

Every super villain has his own story of how they turned evil. For the Joker in the Batman series, the death of his pregnant wife and unborn child along with falling into a vat of chemicals made him hate humanity. For Magneto in the X-Men series, the urge to protect his fellow mutant kind against ignorant and scared humans gave him a motive to work on enslaving humanity. Megamind (Will Ferrell), the "villain" of Metro City also has a story to tell, and he tells it in the latest DreamWorks animation, Megamind.

The movie of Megamind begins like the standard typical spinoff of Superman. Megamind's native planet is about to be absorbed into a black hole, and his parents send him off in a tiny spaceship with his minion, appropriately named Minion (David Cross, Arrested Development). With only 30 seconds left to spare, Megamind is jettisoned off into space, never to see his parents again. Unfortunately for Megamind, at the same time, another super baby is released in a different spaceship, the future MetroMan (Brad Pitt), and they both land on Earth. The problem is MetroMan lands within a mansion and Megamind lands in a prison, and from then on, they clash. Megamind schemes to be evil and destroy Metroman, and battle after battle ensues. But when Metroman falls into one of Megamind's traps and is killed, the whole world is left off balance, forcing Megamind to create a new hero, Titan (Jonah Hill, Knocked Up), in order to have a nemesis again. Titan, however, chooses to play the role of the villain after obtaining his powers and Megamind is left with a choice as to what to do next.

The story is very predictable, taking all the typical hero story plot twists and turns and throwing them all together into one. There is a romance part of the movie, but even that is too easily predicted from the get-go, with cheesy sayings going back and forth like "Don't judge a book by its cover" and "Will you still love me if I looked differently?" Furthermore, the characters' lines and personalities were not that original. For example, Megamind acts very much like the villain Gru (Steve Carell, The Office),from Universal Studio's Despicable Me(2010).

The movie redeems itself through its amazing animation and hilarious humor. For viewers who enjoy films produced in the DreamWorks style, the battle scenes are pretty epically portrayed within the depth and detail of Metro City.  The humor, though created to appeal to little children, made the whole theater burst into laughter from time to time. If you were to go watch this movie, go for the animation and laughs — just not for the plot.