Movie Review – Monsters Inc. (2001)

Monsters Inc. (2001)

 

John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Mary Gibbs, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn, Jennifer Tilly, Bob Peterson, John Ratzenberger, Bonnie Hunt

Writing this review almost 20 years after it was released, my view of it has changed nary a bit. Now with kids myself– it is on a repeated cycle in my home. I enjoyed it then, and I enjoy it now.

For those unaware, the story takes place in the fictional city of Monstropolis, the city where all the monsters live, and two best friends James P “Sully” Sullivan, a giant bear shaped monster, and Mike Wazowski, a much smaller cyclops, both live and work together. Their job is to harness the screams from the children, as children’s screams harness power that runs the city. Sully is on his way to being the gaining the scare record, and being the most successful scarer in the history of the company. His main rival, is the chameleon Randall – who is determined to beat Sully.

The way that the monsters collect the screams is in itself is both clever in not only the set-up of the world; the doors are placed in a magical device on a factory floor, which leads directly into a child’s room, that every child’s door is available to them, and that monsters are more afraid of us, believing human beings to be toxic and extremely dangerous.

The main plot of the story is one night, Sully finds a door on the scare floor (put there by Randall) and inadvertently lets in a human girl. After she is stuck in their world, they are tasked with trying to get her back home, with many obstacles in the way, and must discover new aspects of their friendship when it is truly tested.

It is a very light-hearted tale about how opinions of certain things might be completely wrong, and how once we have all the right information, they can be swayed.

This is a very enjoyable movie for the young and the old, and even though I have watched it dozens of times, I still enjoy it. It might be slightly scary for the very young children (after all there are monsters involved, and there are a few baddies who appear quite scary at times). Obviously as the movie was released in 2001, there are some obvious areas where the CGI has become quite dated, but it still holds.

Followed by a Prequel over a decade later (which will be reviewed at another time)

My rating – a solid **** ½ (out of Five Stars)

Advertisement