Tina Fey

MegamindYear: 2010Rating: PGLength: 95 minutes / 1.58 hours It's odd how few superhero movies ever look at the villain's perspective. Sure, modern villains have been written to be tragic figures whose descent into evil is justified based on their background and past trauma. However, taking all the tropes of the genre and flipping them on their head can expose how ridiculous some of these heroic premises are. As a satire of the genre, Megamind (2010) is surprisingly deep considering its animated and child-like appearance. The argument of nature versus nurture (and brains versus brawn) is front and center here as two alien beings voiced by Brad Pitt and Will Ferrell arrive on Earth and are given distinctly different upbringings. But once Megamind finally defeats his heroic counterpart, he sees how he tied his identity up in his role as a villain. And in creating a new hero to fight him, Megamind learns the difference between the contrasting hero motivations of altruism versus...

Mean Girls Year: 2004 Rating: PG-13 Length: 97 minutes / 1.61 hours With the theaters opening back up again, I took advantage of a few “comeback classics” showings to see a movie that I had missed the first time it came around: Mean Girls (2004). I’m familiar with the numerous memes that this movie spawned, so it was a little weird seeing these little references in their original context. Of course, I’m also not necessarily the target demographic for this movie, as I am not (and have not been) a high school girl. Sure, it gave me an appreciation of the cutthroat and somewhat petty social hierarchy involved with female relationships in high school—in the sense that I didn’t have to put up with it. I can appreciate the ability of Mean Girls to create a situation where the audience learns about this “wild” world of high school by introducing a homeschooled student into the jungle that is the teenage learning environment. The fact that...

Tag: Tina Fey

MOVIE: Megamind (2010)

MOVIE: Mean Girls (2004)