Runtime: 1 hour, 42 minutes
Rating: G
Director: Dan Scanlon
Quick Impressions:
I love watching movies in a theater packed full of little children. You never have to wonder how the rest of the audience is reacting to any given moment on screen. You know. I wish adults would watch movies with the same unguarded enthusiasm. Nothing makes a cinematic experience feel more powerful than the laughter, gasps, whines, shrieks, wails, and innocent comments of tiny viewers who think that nobody else can hear them because they’re “whispering.” (I remember during one tense moment in Gremlins, whispering in grave concern to my mother, “What are they doing to poor Gizmo?” When the entire theater burst out laughing, I was so shocked to have been overheard.)
Kids are honest, and most of them seemed to like Monsters University though not as much as they liked the previews (particularly the teaser for Frozen and every single spot related to Despicable Me 2).
I saw the movie with my husband, our children, and my parents, and everybody enjoyed it, though when we were discussing our favorite parts on the car ride home, my four-year-old volunteered, “My favorite part was the one before where they were with Boo.”
I heartily agree with her. The best part about Monsters University is that it reminds you of Monsters, Inc.
There’s no question of this movie surpassing the original. Monsters, Inc. is a great film. Monsters University is just a pretty good G-rated movie with a few laugh-out-loud moments, lots of action, and memorable, well drawn characters. Here’s the thing, though. I’ve reviewed at least twenty-five movies this year (more than one of them animated), and this is the first one that’s been rated G. It’s not often these days that a film manages to entertain all age groups by giving us a story that’s both authentic and exciting without being offensive or terrifying. Monsters University is not a masterpiece, but it’s a sweet, funny, unambitious little story that should keep anybody interested for all 102 minutes that it occupies the screen.
The Good:
Monstropolis has always been a rich and vibrant place, and in this movie we get to see more of it. Those with a nostalgic streak should be happy to hear that we do spend a bit of time back on the scare floor at the factory. For the most part, though, the prequel takes place in parts of Mike and Sully’s world that haven’t yet been featured on screen.
Given the title, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we spend the most time on the campus of Monsters University, the sort of place that might show up in your dreams the night after you binge read all the Harry Potter books on the sofa while your roommate watches Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds, Police Academy, and the original Monsters, Inc. in the same room.
Basically, if you take a bunch of monsters, send them to Hogwarts, and put them in the types of wacky scenarios featured in every single movie about college made in the 70s or 80s, you’ve got Monsters University. (Come to think of it, that basic formula for college flicks is still being used today.
If Pitch Perfect has less singing and more monsters, for example, it and Monsters University would basically be the same movie.)
The results of this odd mash-up aren’t exactly original, but they are pretty fun and quite delightful to look at. I do think that the Monstropolis featured in the first film has more potential than this follow-up delivers on, but I still think the campus looks cool and exciting. There’s enough going on visually to keep smaller children entertained while their older siblings focus on the plot, and the visually rich setting works for adults, too. Occasionally, the movie felt a little slow to me, but the monstery collegiate setting gave me plenty to look at and kept me from checking out or feeling bored.
But the movie’s real strength is its characters. They’re well drawn (both by the animators and the writers), and the actors playing them couldn’t be better. This is Billy Crystal’s most winning performance since he used to guest star on all those game shows. He’s really amazing as Mike, and John Goodman is always delightful as Sully. It’s also nice that Steve Buscemi returns as Randall. Even though his role is much smaller in this film, it’s not just a throw-away part. We get a lot of groundwork for his future relationship with Mike and Sully that is bound to make fans of Monsters, Inc. smile.
Several new characters appear in this outing, and the clear standout (in terms of performance) is Helen Mirren as Dean Hardscrabble. Not only does Mirren give a great performance, but the character looks so aloof, menacing, creepy (and at moments disgusting). She’s a very welcome addition and makes the most of all of her scenes.
The whole gang at Oozma Kappa is great, too, voiced by Joel Murray, Peter Sohn, Sean Hayes, Dave Foley, and Charlie Day. Definitely there were moments when I’d think, “I really don’t like this character,” but then one by one, they all won me over eventually. Art (Charlie Day), the fuzzy guy who looks like the love child of a Muppet and an Alphacritter (specifically Moot) is a welcome diversion from the get go (though he always feels vaguely familiar. Maybe it’s just that he reminds me of Seth Rogan, which makes no sense really, because, Seth Rogan is neither purple nor M-shaped).
I also really enjoyed Aubrey Plaza. (Alfred Molina is also good as Professor Knight, but I never would have recognized him. I think the actor and the character are underutilized. I didn’t recognize Nathan Fillion as Johnny, either.)
To be honest, Billy Crystal’s performance as Mike Wazowski by itself makes Monsters University a film worth watching. In Monsters, Inc., of course, Mike and Sully are co-protagonists, but as the film goes on, Sully and his blossoming relationship with Boo take the lion’s share of the spotlight. The Mike/Sully friendship is still central, but Sully’s warm response to the child suggests that he is the lead and Mike is his sidekick.
This time around, however, Mike is the monster at the movie’s emotional center, and relating to him is so easy that it actually frightened me. In fact, I identified with him so much that when his persistent optimism finally gave way to the feelings of inadequacy, defeat, and despair that I had seen coming a mile off, I sank into a mini-depression myself. (Emphasis on the “mini” because it lasted all of forty-five seconds, but it felt interminable.) I thought, Now he finally sees the truth about himself, and there’s no hope for him anymore. I was seriously so sad. In fact, in that moment, I suddenly realized that I’d been clinging to a little bit of dread throughout the entire film because I knew a moment like this was coming, and I couldn’t see past it. Then when we suddenly see that despite all of this, there is still hope for Mike to have a bright future, I was so incredibly surprised and happy.
Now I’ll grant that perhaps I got a bit too emotionally involved, but I’m positive that I wasn’t the only one who found Mike extremely sympathetic. The film’s opening is highly successful at making the audience identify with (or at the very least feel for, whisper about) Mike. When you watch a movie with a room packed full of little children, it’s no great mystery how the audience feels about the characters. You can hear their ongoing reaction quite plainly, and all the “ooohs,” “ohhhhs,” laughter, sighs of concern, whispered comments plainly revealed that everybody felt invested in Mike’s happiness from scene one.
In the end, what makes this movie something special is the relationships between the characters, particularly the bond that forms between Mike and Sully.
The music is also really charming. I wasn’t so sure about the score at first, but it really grew on me, and I left the theater loving it. The soundtrack is also good.
Best Scene:
This is definitely a movie that improves as it goes, and the best part (without a doubt) happens when Mike and Sully go through the door. (Even my daughter—when forced to answer based on this particular movie only—singled out aspects of this sequence as her most and least favorite parts of Monsters University.)
Why the movie doesn’t go here a little sooner is anybody’s guess. (I mean, literally, within the context of the plot as it stands, I understand why they go here when they do.)
But the story becomes so much better, so much bigger, so much more unpredictable at this time.
Lots of good things happen beyond that door. The scene by the lake is very touching. But the best thing in the entire movie is definitely the part when Mike and Sully decide to be really scary (scarier than they’ve even been before). It’s funny. It’s exciting. It’s explosive. It’s everything I wanted from a prequel to Monsters, Inc.
Best Scene Visually:
Take your pick. The whole movie looks appealing. In fact, Pixar and Dreamworks have been dazzling us for so long that I think we sometimes forget just how impressive their animation is.
The scaring classroom looks so cool, and Dean Hardscrabble makes a killer entrance. Another scene I love is the party at the frat house. In the summer of 2011, during a trip to Disneyland, we wandered into California Adventure very late at night and took our kids on the Monsters, Inc. ride over and over while the streets were full of the lights and sounds of ElecTRONica. For what I think are obvious reasons, the frat house party really reminded me of that delightful night.
The race through “obstacles” also looks kind of cool, but it annoyed me a little because it seemed lazy somehow, like a less thoughtful version of the jellyfish race in Finding Nemo or a sequence in a run-of-the-mill video game.
Funniest Scene:
Don’t let the cluttered plot fool you. This movie is essentially character driven, and the moments that work best are the dramatic ones. This isn’t a joke-a-minute laugh fest. That said, the movie still contains a lot of comedy. I laughed out loud—actually, in real life, laughed out loud, making actual sound—several times.
Probably my favorite thing was Mike’s list, the one he makes not long after moving into his dorm room. It probably won’t seem as funny to everyone (though my mother also laughed, but then, she knows me. When I was in college, both my roommate and I were great list makers.) I also liked the bits about the mom (though some of them were kind of lazy).
I don’t want to give away any of the actual jokes, but there were some legitimately hilarious moments. (Usually, though, it’s the kind of thing where you laugh out loud, then fall silent, not where you go on laughing until you can’t breathe. There’s really not as much sustained humor.)
Best Action Sequence:
This movie has tons of action, but most of it is less clever than what I’ve come to expect from Pixar. Lots of times, I felt like the writers were saying to themselves, “Now let’s see. They haven’t run around for a while. People will get bored. Throw in some running around.”
This movie’s structure is quite a bit like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but Harry Potter faces challenges that are far more interesting and wizard specific. All of the challenges in this movie are fun to watch, but for all their talk about different scaring techniques, and specificity, and choosing the right way to approach a child, all of the stuff they actually did felt a little mindless and non-specific. (The exception, of course, would be the final challenge.)
Aside from the ending, probably the strongest action scene is the bit in the library simply because it’s big and dangerous and marks a serious turn in the group dynamic.
The Negatives:
It took me a while to warm up to this movie. My daughter is right. The best part clearly happens in the previous movie because Monsters University is in every way dwarfed by its predecessor.
For one thing, that is a film for small children and parents of small children. Its plot and characters work best for people who know somebody like Boo and react to her either like Sully (basically a parent) or like Mike (somebody childless whose friend or relative has become a parent). Its primary message (children’s laughter is more powerful than fear) is clearly aimed at parents (and perhaps tyrants). (And, of course, children can take away other messages like don’t be afraid of the monster under your bed, always be there for your friends).
Monsters University is a little harder for small children to relate to because it’s about going to college and finding out who you really are (as opposed to who you want to be). As the movie opens, I’m sure all the kids can relate to elementary school Mike who has big dreams about his future. But I don’t know that they can relate to some of the interior struggles of college-aged Mike nearly as well. (I’m not saying that they stop liking Mike, but few five-year-olds consider that their dream of being a firefighter may never come true because of their chronic asthma or whatever).
A lot of the stuff that happens in Monsters University is more relatable to people who have gone to college or seen a movie about going to college or grown up or grown up seeing old movies about going to college. There’s still visual humor and cute jokes and touching friendship moments for kids, but this movie is neither as simple nor as profound as Monsters Inc. It would not make a perfect picture book. As a picture book, it would be a (fun) convoluted mess.
In that messy/complicated/not-quite-for-little-kids aspect, Monsters University reminds me a bit of Cars 2—except Cars 2 was much worse since it was slower with a plot that was not only complicated but convoluted. This movie isn’t nearly as alienating to children trying to understand what’s going on, but it’s not as accessible as something like Monsters Inc. either.
Plus even though the characters are moving toward a goal, the whole thing feels episodic, strung together, and predictable. The longest section of the movie (aka the middle) is like a rehash of other college-themed movies. The basic conclusion to this portion of the film seems pretty obvious from the start, so while it’s fun to watch, it’s not as gripping as it could be.
Also a lot of the action sequences feel pretty uninspired compared to some of Pixar’s other films particularly. All the stuff is fun to watch, but sometimes it feels like it’s just thrown in there so that something exciting will happen. The chase scene at the end of the Monsters, Inc. visit definitely springs to mind and even the event where they have to avoid contamination. It’s fun to watch, but it feels kind of forced.
The movie is also a little slow. Actually, the problem really is not how little happens at the beginning, but how much happens near the end. The final act of the movie is so much more interesting and unpredictable (and quite literally explosive) than what’s come before. A movie that was pleasant suddenly becomes excellent and potentially re-watchable. It’s kind of a shame they didn’t get here sooner. I realize a set-up is necessary for a powerful conclusion, but the conclusion is just so much better and more fun to watch than the set-up. It’s kind of a shame. At least the movie ends on a high note, though. And we get some nice cameos by some friendly faces/voices.
Overall:
I’ve always thought that Monsters Inc. is one of Pixar’s best. My mother loves it, too, and not just because Boo looks exactly like my little sister (though that helps). The premise is so novel, the world so intriguing, the characters so likable, the moral so true. Much like a brilliant children’s picture book, Monsters Inc. is simple yet profound.
Monsters University, on the other hand, is not simple at all. Everything is extremely complicated. Much of the profundity is also missing. (The movie does make a good point of its own, but the laughter > scream thing—always a good reminder to parents—is a tough act to follow.) And the even though the plot is more complicated (sometimes cluttered), it is far less original.
Still it’s a fun watch. We all liked it (most of us more than we expected to). The laughs are scattered, but some of them are big. The plot is serviceable, the action is plentiful, the colors are bright, the setting is fun, the acting is great, the music really grows on you, the character development is outstanding, and Billy Crystal gives a particularly memorable performance. If you have a little monster of your own, and you’re dying to get out of the house, Monsters University is probably the perfect solution.