Monster University (***½)
Directed
by: Dan Scanlon
Starring
(voices): Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Hellen Mirren, Nathan
Fillion, Alfred Molina, Charlie Day, John Krasinski, Bonnie Hunt, Bill Hader,
John Ratzenberger
Seen:
June 22nd 2013
***½
Out of ****
Monsters
Inc. is my personal favourite animated movie ever. I loved it to bits. And
Monsters University does it proud in every way while still being its own film.
These two movies exist in the same universe with the same leading characters,
but apart from that they are two separate entities, the timeframes of these two
stories are too far removed from each other to directly influence anything but
the most rudimentary of elements. Monsters Inc. was brilliant for its heartfelt
and enticing telling of an environmental crisis in the Monster universe, and
Monsters University (MU) is brilliant for its genuine and all-inclusive
remembering of college days, and because it stands on its own as a great
team-sports movie too.
In a
world where monsters have to scare human kids to collect screams to keep their
world going, and where said scarer monsters are heroes, the green eye-ball
sized (a large eye-ball though) Mike Wazowski (Crystal) dreams of becoming a
scarer himself, and his dreams seem to be on track when he enrols at MU. Mike
shares a room with the lazy Sulley (Goodman), a huge and furry blue monster who
rests on the laurels of his scarer heritage. Mike and Sully both want to join a
fraternity, and with his lineage Sully easily gets into Roar Omega Roar, while
Mike is left behind. But Sully’s laziness and the fact that Mike is just really
not scary has them fail Scaring 101, and Dean Hardscrabble (Mirren) drops them
from the program before they can even get to the Scare Games. Mike joins Oozma
Kappa as a last resort to enter the scare games, and after Sully fails Scaring
101 and is kicked out of Roar Omega Roar, his only option to possibly become a
scarer is to join Oozma Kappa’s bid for the scare games, which forms the meat
of the movie’s plot, and which is where Mike and Sully need to become close
friends to build the level of trust required to become the best.
MU is
a fantastic animated movie, and I truly enjoyed it as an extension of the world
Monsters Inc. The story is solid and the animation is phenomenal, as we have
come to expect from Pixar. After the relative critical lows of Brave and Cars 2
(both of which I have not yet seen), Pixar is back with a bang with MU. Mike
and Sully are the heart of MU, and Billy Crystal and John Goodman, together
with the rest of the cast, do an incredible job voicing this movie. As I’ve
said, Monsters Inc. is my personal favourite. But MU is really not that far
behind, it is Pixar at its best.
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