When a studio like Pixar announces the release of yet another movie and a sequel (or rather, prequel) no less, the pressure to live up to the expectations set by not only the original movie, but also the standards set by every other excellent Pixar movie made (with the exception of Cars) is always high. While I did not expect Monsters University to be nearly as good as Up, one of my favorite Pixar movies to date, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was nearly as good as Monsters, Inc, which is a feat in and of itself.
Not so much the heartwarming tale that forms the basis for Monsters, Inc., Monsters University is a coming-of-age tale, campus comedy, and sports movie all packaged into one outstanding movie. While the spirit that embodied Monsters, Inc. continues to live on in its prequel, the movie's creators never rely on the audience's love for the first movie to carry on through this one--the new creative content is endless.
"The Blue Umbrella", the Pixar short that begins the film, tells a love story between two umbrellas. It's imaginative, artistic, and cute, utilizing anything that can pass off as a face (drainpipes, crossing signals, to name a few), as characters. This is not Pixar's best short; it's relatively bland and unmemorable, but I can't deny its creativity.
Monsters University starts off with a 6-year-old Mike, who dreams of becoming a scarer upon visiting Monsters, Inc. on a school field trip. Mike is relatively friendless as a kid and is unable to find a partner when asked to pair up on the trip. It's hard not to pity Mike at this point because this is a scene that is relatable to anyone--everyone has experienced, at some point in their lives, that moment of panic when the teacher asks the students to pair up for some group project and you think you might end up alone. The politics of partner-finding are more complicated than you might think, but I digress. A good movie must be, above all, relatable to its audience and Monsters University is full of these kinds of moments.
Fast-forward a decade and Mike is a scare major at Monsters University, presumably one of the most prestigious colleges in the monster world. He's a hard-worker and he gets the good grades, but it's obvious he just doesn't have the talent for a life of scaring. Enter Sulley, who by any standard is the polar opposite. He's a jock who gets by the scaring program based solely on pure natural talent passed down along generations of famous scarers. We find that Sulley's lazy, underachieving attitude, however, is really just a front to cope with the high pressure and expectations that come with being born into a distinguished scarer family. If it's not obvious enough already, the dimensionality of every character within the movie is crazy; you begin to forget that the movie is filled with monsters, not humans. That the characters' mannerisms are not achieved through human acting, but through pure animation, is astounding.
As a current college student myself, Pixar's portrayal of college life, while slightly exaggerated, is still strangely realistic, or as realistic as a movie about monsters in college can be, and completely relatable. There is the school rivalry between Monsters University and Fear Tech (ahem, Virginia Tech) and the annual scare games held by Monsters University's Greek system, which itself consists of the fraternity of stereotypical jocks, the fraternity of outcasts, the sorority of bubbly, giggly monsters, among others. There is no shortage of adventure and it is in this movie that we get to see the start of Mike and Sulley's friendship and eventually, partnership at Monsters, Inc. (as told through a series of well-chosen "photographs" of the two).
Was this movie worth $11.50? Without a doubt, yes! Pixar movies are Pixar movies because of Pixar's attention to even the smallest detail. It's a quality that has yet to be successfully emulated by any other animation studio. Monsters University is just a testament to Pixar's continued genius.
No comments:
Post a Comment