STOP! Watch this:
I know, right? I know.
Just be happy it’s only a tiny clip of the full thing.
That’s what they played right before starting Monsters University. We’re seriously to the point where they’re thrusting sexual tension between differently coloured umbrellas?! Oh, c’mon. I mean, the animation was brilliant but… C’mon, now. Wow.
With that out of the way, MU was pretty much what I expected going in to see it. It was fun, brought back memories of being a kid, had very good animation and a few decently funny parts.
I’d already seen the movie that pre-dated this one, Monsters Incorporated, which was a pretty good flick and even better at the time because I was, well, a kid. This movie really wasn’t any better than the original, but it had some unique things of its own that made it entertaining.
The characters were lovable and colourful; I especially enjoyed Art (Charlie Day), who looks like this:
The voices were awesome as always with Billy Crystal returning as Mike, John Goodman as Sully and Steve Buscemi as Randall (or Randy, as he’s referred to in this movie). Some new voices, such as Helen Mirren, who…
HOLY MUFFINS!
I just discovered that the voice of Roz; y’know, the slug lady from the original movie that makes a cameo in this one, is done by a man!
=
Congrats, Bob Peterson III, you’ve sufficiently scared the biscuits out of me; more so than any Scarer who’s ever existed.
I sure hope he never comes out of my closet…
Now I’m rattled and trying to collect my thoughts… Where was I? Oh!
This film had a pretty generic plot, as most kid oriented movies do and it didn’t try to do anything other than beat the moral of the story into your skull about a thousand times over. I love morals about as much as the next guy but once or twice is enough for me.
Some of the background stuff was cool, for example Randall starting out as a nerd who is constantly trying to get in with “the cool kids” and eventually has a somewhat traumatic and totally embarrassing clash with Sully, setting them up to be enemies in the future.
Then there’s the Yeti (my personal fav, voiced by John Ratzenberger) cameo, who appears for a few seconds as Mike and Sully’s boss in the mail room. He has one line, of course about the possibility of banishment, and then joyfully walks off the screen.
Overall, if you want to relive part of your childhood then go see this movie. If you really don’t care, then you won’t miss it. But if there’s nothing else on and you just want to go see a flick with your friends that isn’t even in the same stratosphere in terms of being eye-busting-ly painful as Spring Breakers, then go right ahead.
I won’t judge.
Rating out of 100: 70
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