Megamind: The Button of Doom (2011)

The Button of Doom is Blu Ray extra for the Megamind film. The quality of the animation is very good, especially the battle sequences.Now that Megamind is no longer evil, he has a garage sale to get rid of all his evil weapons. At least he seems to be trusting that the little kids will not use that dehydrate ray gun on their parents.Only when he later pushes a mysterious red button he activates a giant robot who thinks Megamind is now Metro Man and plans to eliminate him.This is a slickly made short which kids will enjoy due to the sarcastic humour. Will Ferrell returns as the voice of Megamind.

Let me start this review by saying that I did not watch the full feature film about "Megamind". I decided to watch these 13 minutes instead and then decide if I should see the entire thing. Unfortunately, the result is negative. It's just too generic of a story. Megamind goes against a former creation of his who mistakes him for his former enemy. Megamind gets help from his assistant Minion. The good thing about this animated short film is of course that Will Ferrell is in to voice the central character. Brad Pitt is out of the picture though. And the writer from the original film wrote this one here. The director is somebody else though. He made a couple weak "Shrek" short films in the past and "Bee Movie". Not exactly a too impressive body of work. Anyway, the ending with those kids who believe they can do what they want, was pretty fine again. But all in all, it's too little, too late. Also it looks like they will not make a real sequel to Megamind. I am not angry about it. This one here had a touch too much action for my taste and too little fun. Not recommended.

As is the way with these animated films from the two big studios, the DVD release usually has a short film associated with it and more often than not they are as good as the main film in some ways. This one sees Megamind getting rid of all his evil weapons of destruction in a sort of yard sale; it seems like a good idea until a button in a box gets pushed and an unused "unspeakable evil" gets activated and focuses on destroying the protector of Metrocity – who at this time happens to be Megamind himself.As with the main film, this short isn't particularly funny but it is technically pretty impressive. The main battle sequence between the robot and Megamind moves really well and is slick as all get out an it does hold the attention. The short film benefits from having a really simple short plot and as a result it is able to throw in more laughs and be less serious. It still doesn't make it as funny or as smart as it could have been but it is OK. The returning voices focuses on Ferrell and Cross and both of them do well – Cross in particular is a good voice actor.Overall though it is a reasonable enough little DVD extra – not worth hunting down but quite funny and delivered with style and lacks the over-plotting problems that the main film had.