Monsters University
Rated G (It's about monsters, but, you know, Pixar monsters)
Directed by Dan Scanlon
Written by Robert L. Baird, Dan Scanlon and Daniel Gerson
**1/2 out of ****
This one has me baffled. I love animation as an art form. The Fleischer Studios "Popeye" and "Superman" shorts, Henry Selick's peerless stop motion, Aardman Animations, "Cowboy Bebop", "Neon Genesis Evangelion", "Animaniacs", the Looney Tunes, "Batman: The Animated Series", Studio Ghibli, Pixar... There's no reason I can think of to outgrow watching cartoons. Some cartoons are made for children, some are made for everyone, some are made for adults.
Pixar has been amazing for decades. They all but invented the animation landscape we have today, and most of the tools that are used to produce that animation. They specialize in family movies, not movies that parents are forced to sit through with their children, growing stupid and irritated. Pixar's movies are filled with clever details, stunning technical execution, and, in their best films, emotional manipulation that would make Spielberg jealous.
As Meatloaf said, two out of three ain't bad. Sadly, two out of three ain't what I want from Pixar.
Maybe the problem was the fact that "Monsters University" was a prequel. We know how it's gonna end for the most part. We know that Sullivan (John Goodman) and Mike (Billy Crystal) are going to be friends. We know that they're going to work for Monsters, Inc. It's tough to build drama when the audience knows what's going to happen at the end. So, rather than focus on tension, you would need to focus on character and story.
Which is what Scanlon & Co. did here. Sadly, the audience has seen this before. The kids with the "Harry Potter" books and movies, the adults with "Revenge of the Nerds", "Police Academy", pretty much any underdog movie you can name.
Now, there were some little twists to the formula, but, I almost think that they were constrained by the G rating. So much more could have been done in the cabin in the woods, for example.
Pixar all but owned up to the fact that they swiped the character designs for the monsters from Jim Henson. Art, a purple... arch? thing is a dead ringer for a Muppet from some of the early, anarchistic Jim Henson commercials, when Henson was mostly concerned with blowing up the proto-Kermit or any other Muppet that was nearby.
From a technical standpoint, yes, this is an amazing exercise in animation. The movie looks stunning, but, it didn't feel stunning. The characters are much younger here, and, unless I'm completely wrong about monster physiology (which wasn't discussed in the movie, and I'm afraid of what I might find on the internet if I look), they should be more energetic, more spry, more agile. More like what I think I may have been back in college. Yet, there are no really memorable setpieces. Nothing like the Door Rollercoaster in "Monsters, Inc." The movie feels... smaller.
And there just isn't an emotional hook. There's no Boo. Perhaps I just like the idea of a sound engineer following a two-year-old around with a microphone as she wanders and babbles, because that makes me smile. Maybe I'm just let down because this is the first Pixar movie that I've seen in which the theatre's HVAC system functioned correctly and didn't allow dust to get into my eyes. Either way, I wasn't tricked into feeling emotions, and I wanted to be.
Now, the opening short, "The Blue Umbrella", on the other hand, that had some good feels. There's an old Disney short called "Johnny Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet" that tells a similar story, albeit with song and not street objects, but it's just as sweet a love story when told by Pixar.
