Overall Rating
  Awesome: 69.46%
Worth A Look: 19.7%
Average: 6.4%
Pretty Bad: 0.99%
Total Crap: 3.45%
9 reviews, 149 user ratings
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| Monsters, Inc. |
by Brian McKay
"Boo Boo Kitty FUN!"
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Pixar is back, breathing hot loads of dragon fire down the back of "Shrek's" neck with "Monsters Inc." It's everything you hoped for in a Pixar film. Great celebrity voices, lots o' laughs, and fantastic animation. It's not quite as amazing as the animation in "Final Fantasy", but it has two things which that film is lacking: A plot and a heart."Monsters, Inc" is the company that powers the city of Monstropolis. It's a completely normal looking city, looks just like the city you live in, except for the fact that it is populated by monsters of every shape and size. Monsters who drive cars and go to day jobs and who are, for the most part, quite harmless. At Monsters Inc., Monsters go through "portals" to children's rooms (the portals looking like closet doors) and scare the bejesus out of them before beating a hasty retreat. Energy is harnessed from these screams, and converted to power for the city of Monstropolis (yes, I know it's all very silly, but this is essentially a kid's movie, so roll with it. You'll have a much better time once you do.)
Unfortunately, there's a power crunch on, and the screams don't roll in fast enough because kids simply don't scare as easily as they used to. However, the professional scarers are giving it all they have, especially James "Sully" Sullivan, a huggable fanged furry giant voiced by John Goodman. Billy Crystal gives voice to his sidekick and best pal, a cyclopean bipedal green ball named Mike Wazowski. Sully holds the all-time record for screams gathered, and Randall Boggs (Steve Buscemi),a shifty-eyed chameleon with Predator-like camoflauge, has his eyes on the prize. He naturally wants to beat Sully's record, but his designs are deeper and more nefarious than that.
All hell breaks loose in Monstropolis when an effervescent two-year-old girl follows Sully back through a portal. For some strange reason, she's not scared of Sully at all, and delights in chasing him around - something that's easy to do since monsters are terrified of children and avoid them as if they were plague-bearers. When a child intrusion is detected, the CDA (think "Center for Disease Control" for Monsters) is called in, wearing biohazard suits and wielding "kid-detectors".
After he gets over his initial horror and realizes that the girl is harmless, Sully decides to call her "Boo", because she runs around saying it constantly in an attempt to mimic the monsters. She, in return, calls him "Kitty", since the closest thing her two year old mind can equate him to is a giant cat. Sully quickly grows fond of her and decided to hide her from the CDA and the likes of Randall Boggs until he can get her home again. Naturally, all manner of hijinks ensue along the way, and the more he tries to keep Boo quiet, the more she giggles and runs about, drawing more attention to herself.
"Monsters, Inc." is of equal, if not greater, quality than any of Pixar's previous films. Kids will love it, Adults will love it. Crystal is funny, Goodman is perfect as the big-hearted nice-guy monster, and Boo is so adorable it almost hurts. Voice work from a bevy of other great actors (James Coburn, Steve Buscemi, Bonnie Hunt, John Ratzenberger, and Jennifer Tilly) round out the cast perfectly. The animation is amazing, especially a breathtaking chase through a massive room filled with millions of doors. The monsters feel like real people, and Boo is as precious, and precocious, as any real child, and is sure to elicit many "ooohs" and "awwwws" from the crowd.I have no doubt that this film is the birth of a new franchise for Pixar, as well it should be. A new adventure for Boo and Kitty would surely be a good time. The critical nature of my personality wants to find something bad to say about it, but, uh . . . I got nothin'. So I guess that means that you should go see it, even if you're a hard-hearted bastard like me.
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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=4754&reviewer=258
originally posted: 11/06/01 18:51:50
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USA
02-Nov-2001 (G)
DVD: 17-Sep-2002
UK
N/A
Australia
26-Dec-2001
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