Review of Monsters, Inc. (2001) by Pur__0_0__ — 20 Aug 2021

My first ever exposure to Monsters, Inc. was when we had gone to McDonald's and I got a Mike Wazowski toy. I was really scared of it, and my sister used to often scare me with it. Little did I know that Mike is supposed to be the comic relief of the movie. Later on I saw the trailer, and eventually the whole movie. And now I can say with a guarantee that Monsters Inc is one of the better Disney movies. Sure there are some things I didn't like (which I will talk about later) but other than those things, this is absolutely perfect.

One thing I really like about Pixar is that they always take one thing we like from our lives and then expand it into a full blown story. You play with toys? There's Toy Story. You like fishes and the ocean? There's Finding Nemo. You like cars? There's...well, Cars. So similarly over here we were all afraid of monsters coming into our rooms when we were sleeping alone as kids, and that's what this movie is based on. Unlike the conventional monsters who want to kill us, these monsters are working for a power company who just use children's screams for powering up their world.

The story revolves around Sullivan and his best friend Mike Wazowski, who work at Monsters, Inc. Sully is a professional scarer while Mike collects the screams from the children. However, there is one rule that the monsters must abide by - children should not learn about their world otherwise they will no longer be scared and the monster world will run out of energy. Things go down very badly when Mike and Sully find out that Sully accidentally brought a little girl named Boo back to their world. Meanwhile Randall, the second best scarer and Sully's rival, is making a scream extractor which will help him extract the most screams and make him the best employee.

The movie is twenty years old and still the world shown here is very dynamic even by today's standards. The third act where Sully, Mike, Boo and Randall are jumping from one door to another was very cool. The animation is also very good, especially the fact that every single hair on Sully's body is distinguishable, and all the pores on Randall's body can be seen. The comic timing is also great, like the part where Randall says, "Say hello to my scream extractor!" and Mike immediately says "Hello.". And also the part where Sully thinks Boo got crushed so he faints just as the emotional music starts playing.

Now like I said, there are a couple of things I didn't like in this movie, which is what stopped me from giving it a perfect score. First of all I really liked Randall. He was my favourite character in the whole movie. He looks cool, his superpowers are admirable and he's stronger than he looks. But he still loses to humans. First with Boo, who is literally a child who can't even speak. And then by grown humans who beat him with a broom in the end. It would have been better if he got stuck in the middle of nowhere like he made Sully and Mike do so. And the second thing is the part where they are in Nepal. That was boring to say the least.

Monsters, Inc. is one of those movies that can be enjoyed by both children and adults. It is very rare for a Disney movie to be that way nowadays, so it can be revisited back even today. Like I said, its animation has aged very well, which is why it is so much fun to watch it without feeling something is off. And it has a sequel too, something it took me too long to learn about. I really liked it compared to most movies Disney has been making nowadays.