This animated extravaganza takes a brew of adult-friendly stars, music and story lines and then waters everything down for family audiences looking to kill some time at the show. Consider it Filler Lite. Will Ferrell provides the voice of the title character, a master criminal who finally manages to defeat his heroic nemesis Metro Man (Brad Pitt) at the film’s start. With the world suddenly at his fingertips but no one left to battle, Megamind unwisely decides to create a new hero, a plan that goes disastrously awry. The villain-as-hero conceit is a strictly grown-up, contrarian idea. It takes a fair amount of narrative gymnastics to make your bad guy sympathetic to tots. And so screenwriters Alan J. Schoolcraft and Brent Simons take us through all sorts of story twists that will likely leave younger viewers a bit dazed. In terms of plot, Megamind is only slightly less complicated than Inception.
