Review: Monsters University

Monsters University is a film Pixar fought to create. It only took the demise of another animation studio and the dismissal of a slight continuity error to bring the duo of Mike and Sully back together for a genesis story. It’s understandable to question if it has been worth it – the answer is a general ‘yes’.

After a school trip to the factory where kids’ screams are harnessed as energy for the monster world, little wide-eyed Mikey (Billy Crystal) dreams of becoming a scarer. He enrols in the titular college to get his degree, swotting up on every book in the library to ensure he knows the theory inside and out. He clashes heads with lazy, feckless type Jimmy Sullivan (John Goodman) who gets by on his family’s legacy rather than his ability to bring a pencil on the first day of class.

The two get thrown off the course by Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren, channeling her sternest Queen Elizabeth) and find their only chance at salvation is to win the annual Scare Games. With no fraternity willing to accept them, they find themselves reluctantly joining Oozma Kappa, made up of the college’s most hopeless freaks and geeks, in order to fight for their chance to re-enrol. You can probably see where this is going.

Despite the innate predictability of the jocks-versus-geeks tale, Monsters University is still a hoot. There’s plenty of yuks without resorting to tacky pop culture references, unlike Pixar’s last sequel, Cars 2, and that it can’t resist including a couple of references to Monsters, Inc. is no bad thing.

It’s also very good at bathing in the sentimentality that made the first Monsters film so warm. Mike dreams of becoming a scarer but we already know that it won’t happen – the film, in fact, fully expects you to have seen the original film first. Despite the predictability of the ending, University puts across a very respectable and mature lesson: be tenacious and indefatigable but know your strengths and play to them, even if it means changing your path in life. It’ll leave a couple of parents flustered after telling their children they could do anything but it’s nice to see Pixar aren’t getting soft and lazy as the sequel machine continues to turn over.

It was never going to be as good as Monsters, Inc., but University does an excellent job of fleshing out Mike and Sully’s backstory without feeling cheap. It’s a glorious and pretty film, made using a refined lighting engine which allowed animators to focus on animating above all else – the autumn leaves and hazy sunlight of the very first scene are some of the prettiest things ever committed to CGI. Above all else, it’s a declaration of intent by Pixar – if they really want to make a film, they will make it, and they will make it well.

Be sure to get to the theatre in plenty of time for The Blue Umbrella, an eye-rubbingly photo-realistic and beautiful short starring a couple of love-struck parasols alongside humanised drains, mailboxes and traffic lights who fight the elements to bring the two together in the grey-est of city downpours.

————-

Off the Beaten Path

If you need telling about Pixar’s film history you need to see everything they’ve done, pronto. If you plan on seeing Monsters University, be sure to watch Monsters, Inc. first, to understand some of the concepts the new film throws at you.

Tags: Disney, Monsters University, Pixar, The Blue Umbrella