Starring: John Goodman, Billy Crystal
Directed by: Peter Doctir, David Silverman
Take a date, take your mother, take your date’s mother, just go see Monsters, Inc. Pixar Animation Studios has followed up their colossal successes of Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and Toy Story 2 with their best work yet.
Monsters, Inc. is an energy company trying to survive in the midst of the worst energy crisis the town of Monstropolis has ever seen. As human children become increasingly calloused by violence on television, they become harder to scare, which is, in a both subtly political and overtly creative move by Pixar, the fuel of Monstropolis-children’s screams.
The vivid, almost liquid-like animation combined with this breathtakingly creative storyline congeals into Pixar’s secret: make it enjoyable for adults and children on two entirely different levels, and often in two entirely different ways. As we trek through the unraveling of an internal scandal inside Monsters, Inc. Sullivan (John Goodman), a bear-like, purple-ish sweetheart, and Mike (Billy Crystal), a green ball with a tiny mouth, tiny arms and legs, and one huge, hilarious eye, keep the tone both endearing and slapsticky fun throughout.
Kids (and dates) will be captured by the movie’s inescapable cuteness. Never cheesy or heavy-handed in any way, Monsters, Inc. makes even the most grown of men leak out an “awwww” as if he had just seen a baby black tiger born on the Discovery channel.
Adults may be more able to catch the (literally) dozens of visual jokes on the screen at any time. Some of the sheer physics of the movie were amazing. The notion of children’s closet doors being portals into and out of the human world is a trippy and well utilized Einsteinian touch in the movie. In one of the more twisted uses of the portal phenomenon, Mike and Sullivan jump through a door which takes them to Paris, France. Only the door was lying on the ground in the Monsters, Inc factory and on the wall in Paris. Thus when Sullivan follows Mike through the door, the 90 degrees change in gravity crashes big Sully onto poor Mike. Kids laugh because Mike “fell down and go boom”; adults have just noticed the relentless detail the makers of Monsters, Inc. endure and never pause to relish in.
That is, in the end, one of the best aspects of the movie: it is all downplayed. Still slapstick throughout but in an all-in-a-day’s-work attitude. Worth seeing twice, it is the least you can do to reward Pixar’s 5 years of computer work behind this opus that sets the standard for the next computer-based full length feature. Oh, and get there early so you can see Pixar’s complimentary short film on the agonies of being a small bird. A must see.
Features the Voices of John Goodman (James P. Sullivan), Billy Crystal (Mike Wazowski), Mary Gibbs (Boo), Steve Buscemi (Randall Boggs), James Coburn (Henry J. Waternoose), Jennifer Tilly (Celia), Bb Peterson (Roz), Jon Ratzenberger (Yeti), and Frank Oz (Fungus).
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