Monsters, Inc.

We were all, at one time, scared of monsters under the bed. Shadows of clothes in the closet. Weird sounds outside in the trees. I remember thinking there were all kinds of monsters in my room – not as much under my bed as in the closet. And once again, Pixar, who brought us “Toy Story” 1 & 2, plays on both adults’ memories and children’s dreams, making it equally enjoyable for both children and adults.

John Goodman voices James P. Sullivan, known as “Sulley” to friends. He is a big, blue, hairy monster with horns on his head and hands the size of a watermelon. Billy Crystal is Mike Wazowski, his wisecracking, one-eyed best friend. Both of these monsters live in Monstropolis, a world where monsters roam freely. Their city is powered by a rare source of power – children’s screams. That is where Monsters, Incorporated comes in. At Monsters, Inc., monsters like Sulley and Mike open portals into children’s rooms – through closet doors – and scare the children, capturing their scream in a little yellow bottle. Sulley is the top-scarer, bringing in the most scares. But Randall (the always enjoyable – even when animated – Steve Buscemi), a wormy, multiple-armed lizard-monster with the ability to change appearances to its surroundings, is jealous of Sulley, and will attempt anything to get more scares…even if it means taking a child from the real world and bringing it into Monstropolis. But after the child escapes, Sulley and Mike reluctantly look after it, all the while trying to get it back to the real world before Mr. Waternoose (the late James Coburn) and others find out about the incident…

“Monsters, Inc.” does for monsters what “Toy Story” did for toys. Pixar once again not only expands our mind, but our very worlds. I respect their company and commitment values very much, as you can read in my “Toy Story” review. They stick to the values that made Disney films so family-friendly back in the fifties and sixties: Respect for the audience, respect for quality, and respect for the audience’s INTELLIGENCE, something Disney, who has recently coughed up a bunch of lousy, thoughtless sequels, has forgotten. Now, I know that LEGALLY Disney is co-creator of “Toy Story” and “Monsters, Inc.,” but they really are not. They just give Pixar the money and get their name branded on the front box of the film. And even then, I have heard multiple claims that Disney is very mean-spirited towards Pixar (read into sequel trouble for “Toy Story 3″) and gives them the bare minimum.

But that is straying off the subject. “Monsters, Inc.” is one of the most enjoyable animated films I have ever had the pleasure of viewing. I didn’t enjoy it as much the first time, but I then bought it, and have since watched it many times. It is an instant classic. I will be watching it years from now, when I am old and frail and in a rocking chair. It ranks right up there with “Toy Story” 1 & 2, and all the OLDER Disney films from the 50′s-70′s. It has all the elements of a sweet, charming, emotional and pleasurably good-natured animated film. And, more coudos to Pixar: Thank you for not packing it full of the language and inappropriate content that Disney shoves into the dark recesses of their films nowadays.

Not only has Pixar brought back the “Family Film” genre to what it should be, but it also redefines it. Pixar’s animated films are some of the most thoughtful, imaginative and enjoyable animated films ever – not to mention 100 % family safe. Thank you, Pixar, for getting back on track.

5/5 stars

MONSTERS, INC. (2001) **** (Voices of: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, James Coburn, Jennifer Tilly, Steve Buscemi, Mary Gibbs, Bonnie Hunt, Bob Peterson, John Ratzenberger, Frank Oz, Steve Susskind, Jeff Pidgeon, Sam “Penguin” Black, Daniel R. Gerson. (Dir: Peter Docter/Co-directors: David Silverman, Lee Unkrich)

There’s something undeniably magical about a Disney movie that brings out your inner child and the streak continues to manifest itself in the latest with its fine track record with upstarts Pixar (the “Toy Story ” films) in delighting children of all ages in one of the year’s funniest (and most fun) films.

The childhood phenomena of imagining monsters lurking in one’s bedroom closet or under the bed is in actuality a reality that exists solely for the world of the monsters to use all the energy extracted from a child’s screams as their natural resource to power their communities and subsist in their parallel universe. Specifically Scream Heat (“We Scare Because We Care”), the corporate entity that harnesses the youngsters’ reactions to its hard-working crew of creatures including our heroes James P. “Sulley” Sullivan (marvelously voiced by Goodman) and his best buddy Mike Wazowski (ditto Crystal). Sulley is a bear-like, blue and purple hairy and horned monster and Mike is a cyclopean lime green M&M clone. The two couldn’t be more different yet both share their passion for their vocation and the only thing getting in their way is their rival colleague Randall Boggs (Buscemi, at his oiliest menacing), a reptilian nasty who wants to beat Sulley for the all-time factory record of most points racked up in a single day on the job … at any cost. Watching the proceedings is Sulley’s father-figure boss Henry J. Waternoose (Coburn) – a cross between a crab and Edward G. Robinson – whose main priority is avoiding any “rolling blackouts” (in one of the film’s subtle jabs at the current climate in our nation). Mike is in love with cutie pie receptionist Celia (Tilly) who also sports one eye and is afoot taller than him, with a hairdo sporting a Medusa twist (snakes sit atop her head) who wants something from him besides excuses to their frequently put-upon dates together. One day after work Sulley accidentally lets into their world a tiny 4 year old girl – a big no-no – legend has it that one touch is toxic and fatal! – which causes mass havoc wreaked upon the populace as the authorities attempt to corral the tyke while decontaminating the infected workshop’s workers (a running gag has the SWAT like DEA agents popping in at a moment’s notice whenever a sign of human contact – i.e. a small cotton white sock attached to an unsuspecting monster – makes its ugly presence known! Mike is in a panicky sweat that they will lose their jobs and tells Sulley he can’t hide Boo (the nickname the big guy dubs the adorable tot) and they must return her to her bedroom. Easier said than done when Randall gets wind of the partners abetting the unsuspecting crime and he too has his plans to use Boo for his own selfish endeavors…at any cost! The film is a laugh a minute romp and an incredible mix of state-of-the-art computer generated dynamics that truly enhance the candy-colored world of Mike & Sulley with its picture perfect depictions of moveable hair (see how Sulley’s locks sway to and fro so naturally! A first for CGI imagery!) and expressiveness given to the one-eyed Mike who works his brow into a real sweat. Never before has voice talent been so perfectly matched and acted to a t than in the comic team of Crystal and Goodman with their characteristics smartly enhanced into their characters with Crystal’s liberal use of his “SNL” Willy the Masochist (“Oh I hate when that happens!”) and Goodman’s burly, awshucks demeanor fits his soft-hearted meanie like a golden glove. Sulley is the true star of the show with his emotional overload not unlike a kid learning to make a new life transition as he discovers there’s more to his existence than meets the eye (same for Mike; pun intended). When he realizes that Boo (by the way, nice job by the producers to use real-life 4 year old Gibbs, in easily the cutest turn by a child performer ever without making an audience gag) is not threatened by his hulking presence. The laughs are largely thanks to Crystal’s myopic M&M who is always one-step behind his behemoth buddy and slow on the uptake as the plot proceeds with his sly one-liners, sudden bursts of unrestrained anger and confusion, and slapstick antics leads the film into uncharted territories of hysterical laughter and a great breakneck roller-coaster ride with Mike & Sulley attempting to find Boo’s bedroom door with Randall in hot pursuit gives the film a giddy headrush of adrenaline. The film is witty, bright, upbeat and has its shares of incisiveness (I loved the use of HarryHausen’s as a local chic eatery that all the monsters are dying to get into; in case of those who don’t know Harryhausen, Ray Harryhausen, is the premier stop-motion animator pioneer who gave life to scores of sci-fi creatures including the fabled “Sinbad” flicks of the 1960s and 1970s among others) that will undoubtedly have its constituents clamoring for a sequel pronto. Arguably one of the best films and funniest of the year; I loved it and so will you (and your kids if you have any; if not all the more to see it again) An instant classic.

Until now I couldn’t bring myself to believe that computer animation was the equal of either stop motion animation or hand-drawn animation. All computer animated films looked a little (usually more than a little) too sterile, many were animated poorly (“Antz”, “Shrek”, “Final Fantasy”), and even the single unqualified success (“Toy Story 2″) provided little evidence that a computer animated film COULD reach the heights other kinds of animation could. “Toy Story 2″ had flawless character animation, but nothing as inspired as the best in “Tarzan” (released the same year, although I could have chosen almost any other Disney cartoon to make my point); effective art direction, but nothing to match “Fantasia” or “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. And I thought that “Toy Story 2″ was as good as the art was ever going to get.

I was wrong. This is far better. And what’s more, there’s no sense whatever that the script (an unusually rich and uninhibited script) is bumping up against the limits of what the medium will allow. It’s now been proven that computer animation CAN be just as good as any other kind. Whether it will be allowed to be in future is another question, but for now, I’m hopeful. What we have here is computer animation’s first ENTIRELY unalloyed artistic delight, with every character gracefully and characteristically animated, every virtual set just right and pleasing to look at, and an eye-tickling mastery of colour, light and shade that I thought would forever elude CGI artists.

It’s not fair to judge anything good as “Monsters, Inc.” as though it were a children’s movie, but I can’t resist comparing it with “Shrek” – which emphatically IS a children’s movie. “Monsters, inc.” is admittedly ABOUT children, in a sort of a way. The inhabitants of Monstropolis rely on children’s screams for their energy, and the central story is kicked off when one of the monsters accidentally brings a small child (which he calls “Boo”) into the city. But we never see things from her point of view. We see things from the point of view of the monsters, who are all adults – and who, like most adults, see children as frightening, almost incomprehensible members of another species. And they ARE. To be sure, Wazowski comes to feel strong affection for Boo, but she never becomes more than a humanoid pet (which is not to demean the relationship). This is a story about adults looking at childhood from the outside.

“Shrek”, of course, is a children’s movie through and through. Its attention span is short, it has an unthinking mean streak, and children will have a whale of a time watching the central characters (the bigger they are, the more fun it is) act childishly and make poo-poo jokes. “Monsters, Inc.” has too much genuine wit, characters too rich, a world with too much depth, and a story at once too coherent and too complicated, to be PRIMARILY a film for children. This is not to say children won’t like it. Maybe they will. (Who can say?) Here’s the bonus: if they DO like it, it will (unlike “Shrek”) actually have a beneficial effect. It will make them less frightened of the dark.

This is a very entertaining animated film. I’ve seen it twice and enjoyed even more the second time. Billy Crystal said he enjoyed making this film as much as any film he’s ever done, so that’s a good testimony that you’ll get some laughs and enjoy this movie as an adult, too.

Kids will love it, I am sure. The “monsters” in here are funny-looking and almost lovable, nothing that would scare your kids (or you). Crystal has a bunch of funny lines but overall I found this to be as much if not more of a human interest story than a comedy.

There is a lot of sentimentality to it, even overdone a bit at the end, but that’s okay. There is absolutely nothing offensive in here, either. The colors look spectacular, too.