A Look Back at Monsters, Inc.

Copyright 2009, Disney/Pixar

First of all, I wanted to apologize for pushing this back so far. It's been a long few weeks since I looked back at 1999's Toy Story 2, the third Pixar animated feature. I was hoping to get this one up last week but, for some reason, Netflix found it unnecessary to ship this DVD until a few days later. That said, do expect another look back at Pixar each weekend, leading up to the May 29 release of Up.

Speaking of which, it's interesting to take a look now at the 2001 Pixar release, Monsters, Inc., as that film's director, Pete Docter, also takes the reins for the next Pixar cartoon. Though Docter didn't take any of the script credit for Monsters, Inc., I imagine his sensibility from the earlier film will shine through for Up. Either way, when watching Monsters, Inc., I found that I really had forgotten a lot about this movie. I'd still say it's lower on my list of preferred Pixar films, but I enjoyed the film more this time around than I had when I saw it in theaters. It's hard for me to quantify why this is still not going to end up higher than, for example, a bug's life; I guess there's some nostalgia about watching that pint-sized movie.

Monsters, Inc. is really entertaining but unlike anything Pixar's done; though it has plenty of adventure in its third act, the first half of the film is the closest they've come to creating a screwball farce. Once the lead characters, James P. "Sully" Sullivan and Mike Wazowski, get trucked off to the Himalayas, the story is strictly an adventure, but until that point, as Sully and Mike attempt to hide the human girl who snuck into the monster world, farce reigns. As such, this film is the fastest, the craziest, and the one without a strong emotional anchor. Yes, I know that Sully becoming a father figure to Boo, the toddler with the quick moves, is meant to be the source of emotion, but so little time is spent on their relationship. Though we believe Sully has become so attached to this girl (mostly thanks to John Goodman's stellar voice work), there's not enough time to build the relationship what with all the wackiness going on around it.

The strongest element is the friendship between Sully and Mike; I'm not sure how much chemistry was added by having Goodman and Billy Crystal in the recording studio together, but I'm sure it helped. Listening to Crystal riff as Mike and have Goodman's Sully be the sole thing that seems to calm Mike down provides a lot of laughter. Also, the third-act sequence involving all the doors the monsters use to scare children is not only great, but a roller-coaster ride waiting to happen. The plot is meager (monsters really do scare children, but only to create energy; when a child sneaks into the monster world, havoc ensues), but the crisp animation along with the fast pace and lots of clever humor helps lift this movie past it.

I've got the least to say about Monsters, Inc., but let me point out one thing: the first billed screenwriter is Andrew Stanton, who was the director of Pixar's next film, Finding Nemo, which I'll discuss next week. Consider the similar father-child relationship in that film along with the devotion Sully shows to Boo in this film. It's interesting to consider how a similar theme plays out in both films, even more so since the idea works out far better in the underwater opus. But...we'll talk about Nemo next week.