Monsters Inc. (November 2, 2001)

Monsters, Inc. is one of my favorite Pixar movies. I have watched it, along with the first two Toy Story movies and Cars, countless times. This movie has such a fleshed-out world, one of Pixar’s best, with a great assortment of characters and character designs that make the city feel lived in. The voice actors do a fantastic job bringing these colorful characters to life (and they are provided a wonderful script to read from.) Pixar continues to improve its animation techniques, with the fur on the monsters being incredibly detailed (and soft!) and the humans looking increasingly more lifelike. The story focuses on a monster scare duo, James P. “Sully” Sullivan and his one-eyed best friend Mike Wazowski. They work at a factory, Monsters, Inc, where monsters travel through doors into children’s bedrooms in order to scare them. These scares are the fuel that powers their world. The monster world, however, believes that human children are dangerous and so take every precaution to ensure they do not cross into their city, Monstropolis. This fragile existence is destroyed when Boo, a young girl, follows Sully through her door. He and Mike have to find a way to return her to it, while avoiding Randal, Sully’s rival who is colluding with their boss, Henry J. Waternoose, to find a solution to their scare problem (kids are just not being scared like they used to). His solution is to kidnap children and forcibly extract their screams. The story is a little complex, but it works because it provides a springboard for the adorable relationship between Sully, Mike, and Boo. Sully slowly warms up to the sweet Boo and becomes attached to her. This make it parting with her at the end extremely bittersweet. Randal is a great villain with the visually stunning ability to change colors, like a chameleon. He is genuinely fearsome as well as a ruthless competitor, willing to do whatever it takes to climb to the top. The concept of using scaring as an energy source is inspire, as well as the ultimate switch over to laughter as it is 10 times more powerful. One final note, the soundtrack is super, with its jazz tones adding life and levity to this strange story. In fact, the song, “If I Didn’t Have You” won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Overall, Monsters, Inc. is a fantastic movie, one of Pixar’s best, with expert world building, memorable characters, great animation (that still holds up almost two decades on) and a catchy soundtrack.

Final Rating: 10/10