Tag Archives: Despicable Me

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At The Theater #52: Tangled

Talk about coming in at the wire! With less than 12 hours left in 2010, I caught a 1PM screening of Tangled, my 52nd movie at the theater for the year! I was joined by the people who I saw my first movie of the year with, and who I will hopefully see more movies with in the future.
Movie #52! I did it! Wooo!
I loved Tangled. 2010 has been a great year for animated movies. Toy Story 3, Mega Mind, How to Train Your Dragon, Despicable Me and Tangled were all great.
Rapunzel is well versed in the martial art of deadly frying pan.
Despite Mandy Moore costarring in Tangled, I didn’t realize it was a musical until she belted out her first song. Most of the songs that Rapunzel sings are forgettable, but the ruffians centric “I’ve Got a Dream” is terrific. It’s definitely the best song in the movie and might be the next song I sing out at karaoke.
Zachary Levi and Mandy Moore have great chemistry together, or should I say their voices and animated avatars have great chemistry together. I love Zachary Levi from Chuck and Shades of Ray. He doesn’t disappoint here.
There isn’t a hair dryer powerful enough.
Don’t think of Tangled as a kids’ movie. It’s an all ages movie in the broadest sense. I can see people of any age enjoying it.
Well, that’s it for 2010. 52 movies on the couch and 52 movies at the theater. On December 1, I thought the likelihood of completion was small. But here we are. Mission accomplished!
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At The Theater #38: Megamind 3D

Sometimes when you’re behind on a deadline, you resort to desperate measures. Like you haven’t watched enough movies at the theater this year, so you go catch Megamind 3D, a movie you weren’t that excited about, at the UA Court Street in Downtown Brooklyn, a theater that you have repeatedly called the worst movie theater in New York City.

And sometimes, those desperate measures pay off big time. I loved Megamind 3D. It exceeded my expectations in every way. I think it is one of the funniest movies I’ve seen this year and is definitely the best superhero movie not named Iron Man 2 of the year.

Also, the UA Court St proved to be a great place to see a movie. Yeah, I never thought I’d say that either. I think you just have to follow certain rules if you want to see a movie there, namely:

  1. Avoid the ticket window. There is consistently a long line that stretches sometimes to the Barnes & Noble next door, but there’s never a line at the ticket vending machines indoors. Do that people who frequent this theater not have credit cards? Do they fear technology? Are they wary of an inevitable robot uprising? I have no idea.
  2. Never go to the UA Court St on the opening weekend of the movie you want to see.
  3. Or the opening weekend of any movie for that matter. If your movie has been out for awhile, but a new movie is opening up that same weekend, skip this theater.
  4. You know what, just avoid the place anytime Friday through Sunday.
  5. The earlier you go on a weekday, the better. I saw Megamind 3D at 4:45 on a Wednesday afternoon and there were only 6 of us in the theater, and more importantly, no one was psycho.

You should take these rules as seriously as you would rules about feeding mogwai. Heed them and you can avoid the nightmare situations I’ve experienced at the UA Court St, like the time I sat next to a woman who was giving a play by play of Sea Biscuit’s race on her cell phone.

If you are a comic book fan, you need to to see Megamind 3D. Besides taking the familiar Superman vs. Lex Luthor/Brainiac scenario and turning it on its head, Megamind 3D has plenty of injokes for the comic book enthusiast. The best being Megamind’s disguise as Space Dad when he’s training Tighten. It’s straight up Brando from Superman: The Movie. Megamind even talks in a Godfather voice to drive it home.

Space Dad (and Space Step-Mom).

And how funny is the name Tighten? “It’s the only name I could trademark,” says Megamind. Was it supposed to be Titan and Jonah Hill’s character was just too dumb? Or was it Tighten the whole time?

David Cross is hilarious as Minion. I don’t know which minion was better, David Cross’s alien fish in a robot body Minion from Megamind or the minions from Despicable Me. But without a doubt, 2010 is the year of the minion.

I kind of want this.
And this.

Megamind shares a lot in common with J!m, that main character in Go Mutants!, Larry Doyle’s second novel. Both have over-sized blue craniums. Both were judged and ridiculed for their appearance by their small-minded peers growing up. This led to teen rebellion for J!m and the desire for domination over Metro City for Megamind, which when you think about it is the supervillain equivalent of teenage rebellion.

I love this poster.

I can’t be the only one who thought that Tina Fey’s character, the Lois Lane-alike Roxanne Ritchi, looked a lot like Alexis Bledel, but with short hair. If the animators are going to make Roxanne look like Alexis Bledel, why not just cast Alexis Bledel instead of Tina Fey? It was a little weird to hear Tina Fey’s voice come out of Alexis Bledel’s mouth.

I will not be surprised when it is revealed that the lead animator of Megamind has a crush on Alexis Bledel.

Speaking of celebrities voicing animated characters, I feel like it doesn’t always work. Usually when it doesn’t work for me is when it’s a celebrity with a very distinctive voice, like Tina Fey or Jonah Hill, playing a character that they don’t look like in real life. Because they’re both so famous, I keep expecting to see their faces attached to their voices. But I didn’t have this problem with David Cross and Will Ferrell in Megamind. Thinking about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s because their two characters, a talking alien fish and a blue alien with a over-large cranium, were far enough away from being human that I didn’t feel the need for their voices and their faces to match up.

Megamind 3D gets a definite “see it in the theater” rating. If you enjoyed Despicable Me earlier this year, you’ll no doubt like Megamind 3D as well.

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At The Theater #28: Despicable Me

Warning: Before going to see Despicable Me, if you decide to eat lunch at Mile End, my new favorite smoked meat restaurant in Brooklyn, you have a 33% chance of falling asleep during the movie. The combination of all that meat, the long walk in the hot sun from Mile End to Cobble Hill Cinemas and the darkened movie theater proved too much for a member of our party. I’m basing this off a sample size of three, which is clearly scientifically significant. The sandwiches at Mile End are delicious, so it might be a risk worth taking. They also make some delicious poutine for you Montrealers out there.

Note: This sandwich may cause drowsiness.

2010 has been a really weak year for movies, but I think it’s been a very strong one for animated films. Toy Story 3 is currently my Movie of the Year. How to Train Your Dragon was great. And while it came out late last year, I didn’t get around to seeing The Fantastic Mr. Fox until this year (You can decide yourself if that one counts towards my current thesis).

I’m not saying every animated movie this year has been great. I haven’t seen Shrek 4-The-Money, but from what I hear it’s as disappointing as most of this summer’s films.

Add Despicable Me to the good list. I really liked it. I want my own minion. No, I want my own 5-10 minions. I don’t need a whole army, but I think 5-10 minions would be perfect for getting things done and they even cuter in groups than they are alone. They’re half the size of Oompa-Loompas and infinitely less creepy.

When I say I need more minions, that means I need more minions.

Best Buy has a free IPhone app available that translates what the minions are saying during the end credits of the movie. Maybe there was a glitch with mine, but it didn’t work for me. After three hours, the movie was long over, the app still said “Enjoy the show. You phone will vibrate when it’s time to translate,” and a battery at 10% power. Hopefully your results will vary.

This movie is very funny. Steve Carell is great as Gru, the world’s former number one villain turned number two villain by Jason Siegel voicing the geekiest looking super-villain ever. My favorite non-minion part of the movie may have been Gru showing us how a super villain orders coffee in the morning.

Is the story the most original thing in the world? No. But it is very well done, very funny and will probably have you laughing from the opening scene to the close. If only more movies were like that this summer!