Monster's University - Film Review

*CAUTION: This review contains spoilers for Monster's University. If you haven't seen it and wish to do so, proceed with caution.*

One of the biggest challenges of creating something seen as a masterpiece is how you're going to follow it up.

Disney-Pixar hit cinematic gold in 2002 with Monsters, Inc. The film is one of the company's highest rated feature releases and was seen as a film classic. Indeed, in preparation for this, the world has re-watched the film, declared it as "still amazing" and hoped and wished Pixar have pulled off one of the rarest things - a great one-two.

Its arguable that Toy Story - which expanded into a trilogy, no less - is the time Pixar hit cinematic gold on a repetitive  scale. But with a sequel to the ridiculously successful Finding Nemo on the horizon, this is essentially the litmus test to see if Pixar can pull off another cinematic success story.

This essentially serves at the set-up to the original adventures. Mike and Sully are together at a university for scarers, who in the original film were the creatures that generated power for their world by travelling into the human world and scaring little kids.

Obviously, at the end of the original, we know scaring has been superceded as their means to generation by making kids laugh, which generates more electricity.

But anyway, in this set-up, Mike (Billy Crystal) has enrolled as a Scarer's Major at the university, after a field trip to Monsters, Inc at the start of the movie. He meets his room mate Randall (Steve Buscemi) and runs up happy to his first lectures.

This mood is not in any way soured by Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren) saying failure means the end of the road. In his first day, he meets Sully (John Goodman) who is the son of a big name scarer but is fairly slow. Hell, Sully wanders in after Hardscrabble's talk and has to borrow equipment.

The film is fairly straight-forward high school film with pranks, studying and stuff like this up until the moment their exam comes along, where both Sully - not enough preparation - and Mike - just not scary - fail the exam and leave. Obviously knocking over an important university memento did not help their stability.

The duo are re-sent to a significantly less exciting academic proposition but a wager with the dean means they have a challenge - win a Scarer's Olympics as part of a team, and they're let back in.

Unfortunately for them, the team they jumped into bed with are the fairly stereotypical outsider clique.

It's very Ivy League-style American university. It's a well realised but strange to relate to beyond this central American plot.

The plot is also a medley of fairly simple American university films, albeit given change-ups. But it does flow well from academic movie into a more sporting movie.

As its a kids movie, it's not exactly going to be a twisting-turning adventure. It's mainly designed to be a movie for kids, with a plot most people can work out fairly simply and which includes amusing moments. On the second front, it does well as there's are a number of funny gags for older members. Oddly, these aren't the ones in the trailer, which demonstrates either the strength in depth or the oversaturation of the film's advertising.

The sports movie side is fairly straight-forward. Mike and Sully initially rival each other but struggle to turn around the team at first, only for a stroke of luck - a disqualification, no less - to prevent disqualification, but this (eventually) inspires them to make a show of it.

A public humiliation involving glue, glitter and cuddly soft animals inspires them further and before long, they've reached the grand final against the frathouse and are able to win.

Or so they thought, given that it's revealed Sully manipulated the final test to get Mike to win the game and the championship.

This leads to the film's bigger left turn, and a wholly different atmospheric. The final few scenes are played a different pace to the rest of the movie, but make the most of this point and are the fresher pieces in the film. Plus it also pays off to the conclusion that ultimately creates the set-up to the world explored in the film known and loved.

The cast perform well to a free-form script. It provides a start of the dynamic from the original Monsters, Inc.

One thing it doesn't have though is the central element of Boo that made up a lot of the comedy and heart of the original. The lack of something like this is something to a detriment, as it means the film is without the emotional constant and conflicts that made the characters so compelling in the original.

The characters are still compelling, but there's a lot more of the "oh look at us, we're monsters" dynamic rather than the original's feeling. There is comic potential in this, and it does have a lot, plus it also uses enough of the standard classic comedy, but it's not the stone-cold classic all of us were perhaps hoping for.

At the end of it all, it stands up that this is not one of Pixar's best films. It's not in the same league as Up, or Toy Story 3, which are peerless films. But then it's not a clunker like the inexorably lengthened Cars franchise.

It lies somewhere in-between - a solid and delightfully entertaining piece of work, that should please the film's fanbase, if nothing else.

3/5

In typical Pixar fashion, a short film precedes the main feature. This piece is called "The Blue Umbrella", and is a short feature about two umbrellas who fall in love. It sounds and looks like something that wouldn't have been out of place in The Mighty Boosh.

It's fairly cliché and weird, but it serves as a mildly entertaining intro. Plus its also got some refreshing sonic touches.