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Monsters Inc.

Monsters, Inc is Disney/Pixar's 2001 smash animated hit about two monsters who get mixed up with (gasp! horror!) a human child from the other side of the door. Voiced by John Goodman and Billy Crystal, you know the two main protagonists are going to be funny, and they deliver the goods!

Sulley (Goodman) and Mike Wazowski (Crystal) are the top "scaring" team working for Monsters, Inc. MI provides the power for Monstropolis, by bottling up the screams of scared children. But close behind the leading team is Randall, who has a nefarious scheme of his own to catch the leaders.

One evening, Sully comes back to the work floor only to discover that a little girl has come the wrong way through the closet door and now threatens all of Monstropolis. See, it is thought that a human touch will contaminate all who contact it and the very fiber of Monstropolis depends on avoiding them. But she is so cute, and quickly becomes attached to Sully, calling him "Kitty", and Sully also comes to adore the little girl.

But now they need to get her back on her side of the door, all the while trying to elude the Child Decontamiation Team as well as the evil Randall and his schemes. Many chases ensue, and, of course, all ends well.

My girls (5 and 4) and I enjoyed ourselves with this movie. I think we all liked Shrek [Info] [Buy] better; for myself, I though Shrek a much funnier movie. Several of the chases in Monsters, Inc. seemed to drag on forever. The door sequence in particular went from cool to clever to tiresome. But the various monsters were all incredibly well animated and of course the picture and color of the film were beyond criticism. The soundtrack by Randy Newman was engaging, and Adrienne especially seemed to like the title song, "If I Didn't Have You".

As has also become the norm for animated movies, there are a ton of extras. And because I rented the movie from Blockbuster (yech), I actually got the second disc (Netflix makes you "spend" another rental to get it). The short, Mike's New Car had Adrienne and I falling all over ourselves laughing, and she also enjoyed the simple game that was on it (find the hot spot where a piece to Boo's door is hidden). So it is a real good movie, although I wouldn't put it in the class of Shrek or either Toy Story.

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Monsters, Inc. (Special Edition)
John Goodman, Billy Crystal
In the land of monsters, James P. Sullivan is king. He and his friend Mike Wazowski are two of many monsters that work for Monsters, Inc., a utility company that generates power for a very paranoid and nervous city of Monstropolis. The power is generated from the screams of children in the world.

Posted by jdarnold at December 11, 2004 11:34 PM