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In Memoriam 1 942 – 201 3 | ★ ★ ★ ★
REVIEWS
MONSTERS UNIVERSITY
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| Matt Zoller Seitz
June 21, 2013 | ☄ 22
If you were worried that animation giant Pixar was dipping into the same old wells too often ("Toy Story 3," "Cars 2," et al), theannouncement of a prequel to their 2001 hit "Monsters, Inc." might have given you pause. Luckily, the result is more thanreassuring. "Monsters University", which pictures Billy Crystal's one-eyed goblin Mike and John Goodman's fuzzy blue scare-master Sully as students attending Scare U, is true to the spirit of the original film, "Monsters Inc.", and matches its tone. But itnever seems content to turn over old ground.
The tale begins with a brief prologue establishing Mike as a young monster. He's not what you'd call a natural. He's a model student,one of those grinds who gets good grades but lacks that spark that marks the special talents. Sully, the big blue party animal Mikemeets at college, is the opposite. He's the son of a family acclaimed for its multi-generational scaring ability, coasting through life on his name. But Sully'sone of those guys for whom success only seems to come easily. When Mike and Sully try to enter the school's "Scare Program" by winning the annualcampus scaring competition — to avoid getting roped into a "boring" career track, such as manufacturing scream canisters — their strengths andweaknesses become clear. Mike wants to be an all-time champion scarer the way a tiny, chubby kid wants to be in the NBA; there's hope for him, but not inthe way that he thinks. Sully is Mike's opposite. He's lazy and a smart-aleck. He doesn't have as much imagination as some of his classmates assume, andhe's so terrified of failure that he's turned underachieving into a kind of self-protective performance art. (The first time Mike meets him, Sully shamblesinto a class that's already in progress, sans pencil or paper.)
You'll notice that I've already said quite a bit about the two main characters, and I haven't even gotten to a summary of the plot yet. That's because Sullyand Mike are such richly-drawn individuals, so fully imagined in terms of psychology, body language and vocal performance, that they feel more "real"than the live-action heroes in almost any current summer blockbuster you can name. This is a specific Pixar talent, and for all the goodwill that thecompany has generated over the years, they still don't get enough credit for it. Sully's thinner in this film than he was in the first one, and he has the jockish,meathead energy of the young Nick Nolte. Look at how he slouches semi-sideways in classroom desk chairs, or tilts his strong jaw while half-listening, like aman (er, monster) who was told as a child that he had a nice face and never forgot it. Look at Mike's schlumpy posture, his permanent-wedgie walk, and howhe shrugs as if warding off blows that it hasn't occurred to anyone to deliver yet. These touches and others are marvelous, and they go a long way towardmaking the central relationship equal to, yet different from, Mike and Sully's friendship in "Monsters Inc."
The supporting players are just as vivid. Like characters in a classic Preston Sturges or Ernst Lubitsch comedy, they enter the film as caricatures andemerge as fully-formed individuals, the sorts of people (monsters!) that you'd remember fondly if you knew them in life. The members of Oozma Kappa,the uncoolest fraternity on campus — the only one that will take Mike and Sully — are a ragtag bunch, the classic underdogs of sports movie cliche, butthey're physically bizarre, a gaggle of bouncy doodles. There's a seemingly permanent student with an upside-down bat wing for a mustache, a portlysalesman who's older than some of the teachers. There's a spazzy goofball who's basically a pair of legs plus a face (he sure can breakdance, though). There'sa two-headed fellow whose heads argue with one another (one head wants to be a dance major, the other doesn't). There's an entitled jock fraternity that
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tries to recruit Sully, with a self-regarding leader whose puffed-up chest and melon head dwarf his stick legs, and a super-competitive sorority full of gigglymonsters who dress in pink and seem chirpy and harmless until you see their eyes light up with a hellish intensity that would frighten Medusa herself.
Lording it over everyone is the dragon-winged, centipede-bodied Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren, in one of the best cartoon voice performances I'veheard). She's a founding mother of Monsters University who designed the Scare Program and the scaring contest, which unfolds over several days in avariety of menacing and colorful settings. Hardscrabble seems to have been modeled on John Houseman in "The Paper Chase." She's an imperious,intimidating master instructor who brooks no fools, but she pays such close attention to every student's progress that deep down you know that herwithering putdowns are a form of toughlove, a way of testing her charges and making sure they have thick skins, or hides, or scales.
"Monsters University" is the sort of film that's easy to undervalue. It's not deep, nor is it trying to be, but its goals are numerous and varied, and it achievesevery of them with grace. If you've ever seen a sports picture, you know how things have to go, and the movie hits every beat you'd expect; but it neverarrives via the most obvious route, and it's so attuned to the way modern audiences watch genre films that there are times when it seems to anticipate ourobjections and tease them out so that it can answer them later, to our satisfaction and delight. (When a moment feels a bit off, there's a reason for its off-ness.)
The script is filled with lines that are quotable not just because they're funny (though many are) but because they're wise, such as Mike telling Sully, duringan inspirational trip to watch the professionals at Monsters Incorporated, "The best scarers use their differences to their advantage," and Mike's follow-up,a reaction to watching a legendary and now very old scaremaster do his thing, "He doesn't have the speed anymore, but his technique is flawless." Myformer colleague Manohla Dargis was right to object to Pixar's decision to tell yet another guy-centric story after releasing the quietly revolutionary"Brave" — but considering the warmth and intelligence radiating from every frame of this film, it's far from a dealbreaker. There's a decency and lightnessof spirit to "Monsters University" which, in a time of tediously "dark" and "gritty" entertainment, is as bracing as a cannonball-dive into a pool on a hotsummer's day.
Never do you get the sense that director Dan Scanlon, his cowriters, his voice cast, or his army of animators are putting our affection for the first film in theplace of true creativity. Every moment contains five or six things worth admiring: a great line, a shameless but expertly timed sight gag, a swarm ofmarginal details, or a composition or camera move that connects the picture with the three genres it most often invokes, the coming-of-age tale, the campuscomedy, and the sports picture. Randy Newman's drumline-saturated score recalls Elmer Bernstein's classic work on "Animal House" and "Stripes", but sosubtly that it takes a moment to register what he's doing. There are times when the film is juggling so many different kinds of pleasure simultaneously thatwhen it adds one more unexpectedly perfect touch, the whole scene seems to erupt like a string of firecrackers. (My favorite occurs during a wildinfiltration-and-escape sequence, when a character you'd never expect to say such a thing shrieks, "I can't go back to jail!")
That the film may also teach children, and perhaps remind grownups, what it truly means to be honest, honorable, loyal and fair is a bonus, but to my minda big one. When the characters take ethical shortcuts, they're punished in ways that seem quite reasonable, provided they get caught. If they don't getcaught, their consciences do the punishing for them -- and the characters that obviously don't have consciences are the ones that the movie treats mostharshly. The film's lessons are never self-congratulatory, and they're always backed by real empathy for human — or in this case, monstrous — frailties.
In its own sweetly laid-back way, this is perfect family entertainment. Pixar may not have the speed anymore, but its technique is flawless.
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MONSTERS UNIVERSITY (2013)Cast
Steve Buscemi as Randall Boggs (voice)
Jennifer Tilly as Celia Mae (voice)
John Goodman as James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (voice)
Billy Crystal as Michael "Mike" Wazowski (voice)
Helen Mirren as Dean Hardscrabble (voice)
Charlie Day as Art (voice)
Alfred Molina as Professor Knight (voice)
Frank Oz as Fungus (voice)
Director
Dan Scanlon
Screenplay
Pete Docter
Andrew Stanton
Original Music Composer
Randy Newman
Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy
Rated G
110 minutes
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