Megamind

Directed by Tom McGrath

(PG)

**

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Didn’t I just see this movie? said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. A hapless villain becomes sympathetic. That was the idea behind Despicable Me, a computer-generated adventure released earlier this year, and it’s also the premise of this new hit from DreamWorks. Although Megamind is “moderately funny,” its copycat feel makes it less than an outright pleasure. When we meet the blue, bulbous-headed title character, voiced by Will Ferrell, he’s about to sink into an existential crisis created by an unexpected triumph over the superhero who has been his longtime nemesis. The screenplay pushes to new heights the old idea that supervillains can’t exist without superheroes, said Tasha Robinson in the A.V. Club. Ferrell’s bad guy “essentially turns into a grieving widow.” But even after Megamind creates a new nemesis who gets out of control, the story “doesn’t go far enough to say anything new.” The film “never shakes a feeling of been-there-spoofed-that,” said Justin Chang in Variety. It comes off as a “derivative wisecracking machine rather than a feat of sustained imagination.”