Ladies and Gentlemen, whether you like it, the Pixar Playlist
OK, so I liked Monsters Inc, it was a perfectly fine movie with some creative ideas and a lot of charm to it. Can they recapture that charm with this prequel, Monsters University? Spoiler alert: no, no they cannot…
But that’s not to say there wasn’t effort put in, the production crew visited various colleges and some spent time in a Fraternity house to research college life. This film also was the first to use Global Illumination, a new lighting system they’d developed to essentially automate the process, so they didn’t have to insert shadows frame by frame.
Once again, the film had a $200m budget and made a decent profit, with a $743m box office haul and it came out favourably with critics too, with an 80% Rotten Tomatoes score. So why am I down on it? Let’s take a look.
Mike Wazowski is determined to be a scarer and is inspired as a child, on a class visit to Monsters Inc, to apply to Monsters University. There’s just one problem, no-one’s convinced that he’s scary. Still, he tries hard, getting theoretically some of the best results. It’s at Monsters University and not in 4th Grade as it was in the main film, that Mike meets Sullivan, who hoped to ride of the coat-tails of his ancestors to get by without doing the work. The two end up butting heads and they’re both kicked out of the scare class.
Wanting to prove them all wrong, Mike signs himself, a group of Outsiders named OK, and, reluctantly, Sullivan also to compete in a scare competition, making a deal with the sinister head-teacher that if his group wins they get back in, but if they lose, they have to leave. The problems are simple. The OK group know nothing about Scaring, Mike’s more caught up with himself than his team and Sullivan much the same, though he’s less competent. Can they prove their doubters wrong and challenge the hierarchy?
I mentioned in the Monsters Inc review that character arcs were kinda lacking, this goes someway to addressing that. Both Mike and Sullivan have well-defined character arcs that act initially as a roadblock to their friendship and allows for the inevitable breakup as the climax approaches. Of course we have to buy the idea that Mike isn’t considered scary… They literally show us monsters of all shapes and sizes at Monsters Inc during a second visit there, I feel this is a hard idea to get behind.
There’s also the concept that there’s only one way to scare people. I would figure a scare programme would try and tailor appropriate scares to how the monsters look. Incidentally, it takes Mike to try that with OK group later on. Mike’s arc is about becoming less tightly wound and accepting help, working with a team. He’s incredibly hard-working and intelligent which makes him the ideal leader, once he got his eyeball out of his ass.
Sullivan starts off as a jerk, incredibly lazy and believing that his family name would be enough. He rejects the notion of teamwork for around the first half of the film, only coming around seeing Monsters Inc for the first time. Much like Mike, he joins the OK group for selfish reasons, and has little faith in anyone but himself. Once he begins to embrace teamwork, the issue of Mike’s supposed lack of scariness leads to him cheating on Mike’s behalf.
OK, I can’t get around this for long though, this story is incredibly dull. The OK group have a couple of running jokes but minimal actual personality, and plotline itself is incredibly stereotypical and boring. The other problem is that Mike and Sully’s ultimate destination is a foregone conclusion, they end up working for Monsters Inc among their top scarers, so whatever happens here, that goal will be accomplished, which rather removes a lot of the tension.
It’s also kinda lacking in the emotional side. The scene where Mike and Sully make up, I think is supposed to tug at the heartstrings and it’s certainly a relateable idea but again, this was a foregone conclusion. The climax itself involves the two planning a more elaborate scare that involves them doing things I’m not sure I know how they do. It’s actually a pretty good climax.
When it comes to animation, it does look very good, a drastic improvement over the original, but the children characters in the climax seem scarier than the Monsters, I don’t know if that’s intentional. I think there might have been a few bugs in their new lightning software as I could swear shadows were missing in a couple of scenes.
Monsters University is among the weaker end of Pixar’s line-up, with the plot being incredibly stock and the end a foregone conclusion. Solid performances and jokes and an animation upgrade help it, but honestly, your kids might the original more entertaining. I can certainly see why Pixar decided to take a break after this one.
#1 The Incredibles
#2 Up
#3 Finding Nemo
#4 Toy Story 3
#5 WALL-E
#6 Toy Story 2
#7 Brave
#8 Toy Story
#9 Monsters Inc
#10 Ratatouille
#11 Cars
#12 Monsters University
#13 Cars 2
#14 A Bug’s Life
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