Monsters, Inc

The 2001 Pixar animated movie, Monsters Inc may have a lot of supporters, but can be a little bit of a mixed bag. Only being Pixar’s third movie since the creation of the company, the story of what really goes on with the monsters that live in your closet is either beloved and remembered fondly, or just considered an at best solid film and at worst okay movie that didn’t leave too much of an impact compared to other Pixar films. After it failed to make a comeback with Monsters University in 2013, the brand could’ve just remained in obscurity, but its impressive box office returns, its status as an Oscar-winning movie, and the fact that it had enough staying power to earn an upcoming series titled Monsters at Work which would continue on from the first film’s ending, proves that even a mixed film from Pixar in their early days could captivate just as strongly as their heavy hitters. In a world parallel to the human world, an entire population of monsters thrive in their own society, which remains intact through travelling through the closest of children throughout the globe and collecting their screams to use as a power source. Two monsters named Mike and Sully (voiced by Billy Crystal and John Goodman) are a scaring duo (with Sully being the scarer and Mike being the planner) and are on their way to becoming the top scarers of the company, but that plan is put on halt when a little girl later named Boo enters their world. Even though this doesn’t seem that bad, all monsters believe that human children are toxic and incredibly deadly to be around, so the world is placed on mass alert and Sully and Mike are stuck with something they think could kill them. When the decide to take the girl back through her door and set things back to normal, they discover that she might be part of a larger conspiracy to harness the power of children’s scream, and the two have to get her back before she’s discovered by the evil monster behind this whole situation, Randall (voiced by Steve Buscemi). The movie is definitely home a lot of great qualities that make it feel like a staple Pixar film, but it is also home to several odd decision and poor choices that make things not as strong overall.

With this film being the third original idea created for Pixar, there would’ve definitely been some pressure put onto this film as the previous newest idea, A Bug’s Life, wasn’t as popular as the Toy Story films, so this movie needed to show Pixar could survive without them. Being directed by Pete Doctor (in his directorial debut), you can feel where he is still finding his footing in some places, but you can also see where his strengths lie and how he’d grow them. He would later go on to direct Inside Out and Up, two incredible Pixar movies that have similarities between how they juggle their emotional moments with goofy hi jinks, as well as how they bundle together a surprisingly complicated idea into a format that is digestible for both young and old audience members whilst still retaining a sense of genuine heart at its core. Out of these three, Monsters Inc is easily the weakest, but it doesn’t feel like it’s Pete Doctor’s fault and mostly comes down to some portions of the script. The concept for this movie is actually pretty good, taking on a very timeless concept of ”monsters hiding in your room” and taking that to a new level that visualizes it in a creative but also humane manner. While the idea of monsters scaring people being like a job within this bureaucratic society isn’t entirely fresh as it had been done in other things previous, including elements like using children screams as a source of power is a clever way of tying in a familiar component whilst letting it act as decent world building. The environment actually feels like it’s a nice balance between the unknown world of monsters and superstitions, and a technologically heavy environment that relies on industrial machines and extreme labour to keep things moving along smoothly, creating that nice mixture of bizarre and realistic that Pixar would become known for. This framework leads way into some fun sequences and helps to form a fantastic climax which involves hopping through several doors while trying to find one in a gigantic airborne warehouse, it definitely feels more standardized than you’d expect from a monster world, but it comes together pretty well and has great visuals to support it. The troubles seem to come from not as much the concepts, but rather the execution of the plot, which was written by Doctor alongside Jill Culton, Jeff Pidgeon, and Ralph Eggleston. While it is laid out fairly well and even the logistics of the villainous plan are clearly established and explained within the world they created,  by the time that it reaches the end point and everything is out in the open, it not only isn’t explained in a good enough way to make it feel effective, but it also just seems dumb, predictable, simplistic, and even kind of lazy. There feels like there was very little effort put into this side of the story, but since it takes up a good chunk of the film’s running time, it can definitely be felt. The film feels like it leans more into its comedic components than its dramatic parts, as most of the emotional moments don’t really work. The screenplay by Andrew Stanton and Daniel Gerson has good moments and sometimes result in some nice heart (mainly between Sully and Boo), but the world has a nice set-up but is surprisingly dull, the drama feels strangely complicated, and none of the characters are that interestingly delivered.

Probably one of the reasons the film isn’t as solid as some other Pixar’s films is because of its characters. While none of them are painful to watch, none of them are that interesting, unique, or funny, despite housing some decent designs and solid funny voice talent. You’d figure for a world run by hideous monsters that it would lead way to more defined personalities, but since the vibe of the film is strangely mundane and natural, it doesn’t really result in a lot of wildness to come out of these roles. While this could be excusable for some of the supporting roles, it hurts the most when it comes to the leads, who are performed and written in a way that is fairly bland and not that engaging. Sully and Mike are played as a very traditional comedic duo, and it feels like their roles were written around the voice actors as opposed to allowing the actors to bring something out of these parts. John Goodman is passable as Sully (it is hard to imagine him at least not doing the bare minimum), but he’s played as a very traditional straight man (and therefore isn’t allowed to be very interesting), and Billy Crystal feels kind of off as Mike, with pretty generic writing and am almost ‘’vaudeville’’ manner of performing that feels like its playing too much to the audience and never truly in the moment. They aren’t bad roles, but they don’t have the strength of other Pixar leads. The villains are in the same camp, as while their designs are arguably better than the leads, their motivations and personalities are so generic and bland that it doesn’t even matter. They don’t have an intimidation factor, they aren’t funny or memorable, they are just a tool for an already poorly handled storyline. Boo is just kind of a tool for the story and the fact that she is a baby who only squeals, laughs and cries means that she is either going to be people’s least favorite or most favorite component of the film. While she doesn’t really leave much of an impression, her being unable to talk actually leads to a pretty nice relationship with Sully as both learn to be comfortable around the other in a pretty natural way, it’s one of the few emotional elements of the movie that actually works okay.

It is impressive looking back at early Pixar movies and seeing how even their earliest works didn’t look too bad in comparison to other CG movies which were still trying to find their footing. It’s a credit to the animators who worked at the studios at not only their genuine talent at quickly being able to adapt and perfect their craft, but also being able to make visuals and ideas that would usually be impossible for such fresh technology, still come across in a way that can still be appreciated even if it is a little shaky with the passage of time. While most Pixar movies have something specific that stands out in terms of how they upgraded the animation in, Monsters Inc doesn’t really feel like one of them. It still looks nice, as the colors are still pretty, the environments look detailed enough, even the designs aren’t great, they aren’t the most unimpressive and some of the background creatures can look okay, and the textures on a lot of the monsters are actually really great. The fur on Sully in particular looks very impressive even for today (being able to count each individual fur when it moves is pretty cool to see from a movie in 2001), but nothing else really feels like its breaking new grounds. The music by Randy Newman is oddly chill and doesn’t feel as intrusively bland as it has in other projects (it’s at least not a musical) but it doesn’t have too many memorable moments outside of a pretty nice jazzy melody during an equally cool opening credits sequence.

Monsters, Inc is not a perfectly told movie as it has quite a few flaws that hold it back from being one of the Pixar greats, but it houses enough legitimately good things to keep it from being one of their lesser examples (which they honestly wouldn’t even have until Cars came out). If the story were more engaging and the characters better written, this could have been turned into something bigger and more captivating, but the end results just proved to be fairly lukewarm. The movie has a great climax, handles its premise for the most part really well, and does have some great moments that can be emotionally effective, but it just wasn’t enough to make the whole package work. As a whole, this is a perfectly fine movie with some nice elements that make it worth a watch, but it isn’t scary good or scary bad, just scary adequate.