Monsters, Inc. 2001

[7.3/10] The setup of Monsters, Inc. draws you in. What’s on the other side of the closet when you’re a kid who’s afraid of the dark? The answer turns out to be a bustling ecosystem called Monstropolis, where the city runs on the power of screams, the things that go bump in the night are workaday stiffs, and there’s a big punchclock-style corporation in charge of keeping the whole thing running. It’s a hell of a world to build your movie around, one with that trademark Pixar inventiveness.

It also creates what would eventually become a trademark of lead director Pete Docter -- a set of rules and procedures to establish and then play around with. (It’s more fun than it sounds.) “Scarers” are flanked by scare assistants who man the magic doors to kids’ rooms and collect the scream canisters. Things from the human world are considered contaminants, requiring investigation and disintegration by the C.D.A. (Child Detection Agency), especially kids, who are considered utterly toxic. Different Monsters Inc. employees compete to set the scare record. The company has trainees and paperwork and other amusingly quotidian concerns for an office full of goofy-looking boogiemen.

Most importantly, there’s a “scream shortage” (read: energy shortage) causing rolling blackouts and dwindling fortunes for the company. Those workaday details provide Docter and company a nice baselines to play their adventures against. And the shortage gives the film a bit of thematic heft. Kids aren’t getting as scared as easily as they used to, requiring everyone to squeeze to meet codas and contemplate the ruin that will happen if Monsters Inc. stops being able to provide the energy everyone needs. There’s a touch of social commentary and stakes at once, which is a neat trick.

To bring all that down to Earth (so to speak), Pixar resorts to its old standby -- the buddy comedy. Enter Sully, the furry lead scarer and noble face of the company who just wants to do his job the best he can, and Mike Wazowksi, the small nebbishy one-eyed assistant who coaches up Sully and helps navigate the ins and outs of the office. Leads John Goodman and Billy Crystal are both comic pros, and while they don’t have the same cartoon chemistry that, say, Goodman and David Spade had in The Emperor’s New Groove, the two play off one another well enough, and work as a comic pairing of opposites.

Their world is blown up when a chance late night visit to the scare floor introduces Sully to Boo, a little toddler who accidentally wanders her way into Monstropolis. Boo is a total cutie, and the peak of enjoyment in the film is often just watching her kiddo around being adorable and playful while Sully and Mike freak out. There’s a realness to the way she sings to herself and laughs or cringes or just generally plays around while everyone else is frantically deciding what to do with her, and it gives the movie its most endearing quality.

The problem is that it’s not enough to support the movie’s big middle. Between the setup of how Monsters. Inc. and Monstropolis work, and the climax where we learn the details of the evil plan, there’s a lot of capering with Sully, Mike, and Boo. Some of it’s necessary, particularly Sully getting the chance to bond with Boo and learn that she’s not toxic at all. Some of it’s amusing enough -- there’s a lot of slapstick going on and a few clever bits. But most of it is standard issue wacky escapades, all of which are perfectly solid, but do little to rise above the usual cartoon hijinks milieu.

The same goes for the film’s aesthetic. I’m hesitant to slate a computer-animated film from twenty years ago too harshly, but suffice it to say, without the inherent layer of artificiality that making your main characters toys provide, the age of the animation starts to show here. Sully’s fur is believably bushy, and Randall’s shape shifting works nicely, but there’s a plasticky look to a lot of the monsters, and lots of their movements feel just a bit off, more herky jerky than fluid. Some of the designs are neat, particularly Celia and her Medusa-like snake hair, and the third act door sequence is creative, but this is not Pixar’s most sterling outing on a pure visual level.

It does have a strong theme, albeit one that gets a bit buried in the zany games of hide and seek with the bad guys. That theme comes down to Sully fully realizing what he’s been a part of and taken for granted all this time. He realizes that he’s been lied to about humans, that what he thought he was doing for the good turned out to be bad when he pulled back the lens and saw a broader view, and most of all that what he thought of as just doing his job turned out to be hurting people.

The emotional crux of the film comes when Sully pulls off a scaring demonstration and, unbeknownst to him, Boo had snuck into the room. He sees her terrified face on the monitor and has his harrowing realization, one that changes him. It’s easy for “toxic” kids to be an abstracted necessity to generate power for your fair city. But when you get to know one, and understand how what you do causes them fear and pain, it’s a lot harder to compartmentalize it as part of “just doing your job.” Sully’s no longer content with buying the company line or doing things the old ways anymore.

It ties into Monsters, Inc. power allegory, where the allegory for screams as fossil fuels and laughs as renewable energy. With dwindling supplies, Mr. Waternoose doubles down on the old methods, finding even harsher ways to get what’s needed to keep his company’s fortunes on the right track, without considering a different, less harmful way of getting the energy the city needs. It’s not subtle, but it works within the context of the film.

So does the emotional heartstring tug at the end, where after the day is saved and the bad guys are thwarted, Sully has to say goodbye to the little tyke who changed his world. It’s a sweet moment, getting by on charm alone, which helps make up for the way most of the characters in this one are too underdeveloped to earn much in the way of emotional catharsis.

Monsters Inc. isn’t in the top tier for Pixar or Pete Docter’s filmography, but that’s also no sin considering what ranks above it. It’s still a roundly enjoyable animated flick, with a great concept, some big ideas, and an endearing central friendship between a big furry “kitty” and a little pre-verbal moppet. While it doesn’t necessarily fully capitalize on all the potential those elements offer, it should still generate enough laughs and awws to power Monstropolis until the next Pixar movie comes along.