Film review: Megamind

IT ISN'T easy being evil, as Dreamworks has found out with Megamind, their 3D animated feature about a villain and his co-dependent relationship with his heroic nemesis. The result isn't bad, but it could have been a lot better.

Directed by Tom Madagascar McGrath, Megamind features Will Ferrell as a lightbulb-headed villain who frets over the success of the do-gooding Metro Man, a smug caped crusader (voiced by Brad Pitt) who literally walks on water and has "the power of flight, invulnerability and great hair". On the other hand Megamind is bitter, blue and bald.

Both came to earth as toddlers from dying planets, but while Metroman's Superman-style spaceship landed in a rich country house, Megamind crashed into the recreation area of a jail for the criminally gifted. Somehow, both end up at the same school, where they quickly become lifelong rivals. As they grow up, these battles escalate, and are often refereed by a Lois Lane-style TV reporter called Roxanne (Tina Fey) who has been abducted so often by Megamind that she has a Frequent Kidnapping Loyalty card.

After every encounter, Megamind is more or less resigned to being carted off to jail. Except one day, he wins. And with Metroman out of the picture, Megamind is now in control of Metrocity.

However, total domination soon palls, and Megamind comes to realise that every Lex Luthor needs a Superman. With the help of his loyal piranha-headed sidekick Minion (David Cross) he creates a new hero to challenge him by injecting scraps of Metroman's DNA into Hal (Jonah Hill) a schlubby news cameraman. Unfortunately the super-powered Tighten fails to appreciate that with power comes moral responsibility, forcing Megamind to locate his own inner hero and save the day.

All this is amiable, moderately funny stuff, and there's some thoughtful 3D design here, especially when projecting glass or water, creating fractured multiple images. If only the premise didn't feel so borrowed. This isn't the first animated feature to acknowledge the loneliness of the bad guy who secretly longs to be part of the good gang. It's not even the first one this year - earlier this autumn Universal released the fitfully entertaining Despicable Me.

Dreamworks itself has a yin to its yang, the avuncular behemoth Pixar, which seems to be at the peak of its superpowers right now with Toy Story 3 and Up. Dreamworks' response is to woo audiences with hip characters and pop culture asides, but this post-modern flippancy may sail over the heads of smaller viewers too young to appreciate a joke based on the original Donkey Kong. Elsewhere there are gags about the 1980s Karate Kid, and when Megamind takes over Metrocity, he puts up posters echoing the Obama campaign, except Megamind's read "No, you can't".This does not seem to impress everyone under ten. "Are we done yet?" asked a child plaintively halfway through my stonily quiet family screening. You can see their point: there's nothing wrong with a family film throwing a few bones to long-suffering adults, but this movie is so skewed to appeal to your nerdy inner child that Megamind may not offer much more to real kids than squabbling and huge detonations. v

• On general release from Friday