Review of Monsters, Inc. (2001) by Halfwelshman — 05 Jun 2012

Monsters, Inc. is film animation at its most heart-warming, poignant and hilarious. The film is not just a simple, pretty diversion to keep the young ones quiet for 90 minutes, but an incredibly clever, multi-faceted film for all ages.

It's a buddy movie, it's a work-based sitcom, an imaginative fantasy film, and most pleasingly a biting and intelligent satire on both the world energy crisis and the over-exposure of children to increasingly horrific images in the modern world.

Inventively, the monster city is not powered by electricity, gas and oil, but by children's screams, which the workers of Monsters Incorporated, dubbed "scarers" are tasked with collecting by going through portals into the human world, portals which appear as closet doors in the bedrooms of children.

The monster world is facing an energy shortage due to the fact that kids "just don't get scared like they used to", resulting in some monsters resorting to increasingly drastic and amoral techniques to extract childrens' screams.

The cast all give sterling vocal performances - John Goodman's hairy soft-hearted giant Sulley and Billy Crystal's minuscule green cyclops Mike make a great comedy double-act, Steve Buscemi's reptilian villain Randall is appropriately slimy and conniving, and the staggeringly multi-talented animator/writer/director/occasional actor Bob Peterson voices the cynical slug-secretary-from-hell Roz, and never fails to raise a smile.

Monsters, Inc. gets the balance between vastly differing moods just right, with cuteness (Sulley's adorable father-daughter relationship with Boo), humour (anything said or done by Mike) and darkness (Randall's unsavory evil master plan) all given equal service throughout the film by director Pete Doctor and the multiple writers.

I also challenge anyone who's in possession of a working heart not to blub at the film's bittersweet, utterly heartbreaking finale. This might provoke considerable debate amongst Pixar devotees (as the vast majority of the studio's output is jolly good, afterall) but I say that Monsters, Inc.

, while only being the fourth film released, is the very best work the animation powerhouse has produced thus far. It's truly Pixar's finest hour not only due to its flawless technical craftsmanship, but because of its abundance of heart and soul.