One of my earliest complete memories as a cinemaphile is seeing ‘Monsters Inc.’, released in 2001 when I was nine years old and high on life and sugar as only a nine year old can be. I saw it with some adults, who loved it and my younger brother, who loved it. So far, so Pixar. Ironically, whilst it was that first memory, it was also one of the last films that I owned on VHS; certainly by the time we got to the second Harry Potter film in 2002, my family had moved onto DVD. ‘Monsters Inc.’ is special for me then, in a way that I haven’t really thought about until I sat down to write about it. It came at the age for me when you’re almost kind of functioning as a human being, and now that I am lawfully an actual grown up, it will be interesting to look at it again and see if my opinions have changed that much.
It’s also worth pointing out that I haven’t watched this film back since I saw ‘Monsters University’, the kind of disappointing prequel that was churned out a few years back. I mean, it was an alright film but Pixar, capable of masterpieces – ‘Toy Story 3’, ‘Up’, ‘WALL-E’ – also produced ‘Cars’ and ‘Cars 2’, so they are far from bulletproof. I worry that the prequel might affect how I watch this infinitely superior first movie.
‘Monsters Inc.’ centres on best friends Sully and Mike, a scare team working at the biggest energy producer in town, collecting the children’s screams that power the monster world. One night, Sully stays late and inadvertently brings one of the toxic children into his world. As he and Mike learn that the child, Boo, is not as dangerous as they have been led to believe, they begin to unearth a nefarious scheme and struggle to keep Boo a secret as they try to return her to her own world. As far as a story goes, it is a familiar one; the little guy versus the big corporation, with a splash of chase caper hijinks and some buddy comedy for good measure. It’s a mix that works.
Much of the film hangs on the relationship between Mike and Sully, and how Boo disrupts their little world when she comes crashing into it. I think that Sully is the main character here, and if not that, then he is at least the emotional centre of the film, being the one who really comes to cherish Boo.
His character suffers because of this; the squeaky clean good guy is never the interesting one, no matter how much heart he may have. Luckily for him, he has the perfect foil, because Mike is a tidal wave of wisecracks and frantic energy. Voiced by Billy Crystal on top form, it is no surprise that Mike is without a doubt the best thing about this film. He carries it in the moments when it starts to dip and gets all the best lines, especially when he is bantering with the no nonsense Roz (who, coincidentally, is one of the best supporting characters of any Pixar film ever). Have conversations about paperwork ever been this much fun? Watching back, it makes total sense to me now why they decided to focus on Mike in the prequel.
Randall, the villain of the piece, lacks a bit of the physical presence of other Pixar bad guys – think Hopper from ‘A Bug’s Life’ or Lotso of ‘Toy Story 3’ – and never really feels like a threat when compared to Sully’s sheer size. His scream extractor though is a thing of terror; it scared me when I was a kid and it still scares me now. It skates awfully close to the line for a children’s film, especially when Randall actually uses it on Mike. It is that moment that takes him from being a fairly average villain onto a whole other level of bad. His comeuppance at the end of the film doesn’t seem like enough for me watching it now, and I am no more inclined to feel sorry for him than I was before having seen his origin story in ‘Monsters University’.
‘Monsters Inc.’ is not quite the film that I remember. There’s a lot of plot points that don’t really make sense – why exactly can’t they recall a door that they have just sent away on this super high tech machine? – but as an early example of Pixar’s work, I am willing to overlook a lot of these issues. After all, it might not have the finesse of later films from the studio, but it still ranks pretty highly as a movie in and of itself. If it was any other children’s film, I’d be holding it up to showcase the quality that films for kids can have. In that sense, and not compared to its siblings, it really is a great piece of work.
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