Reviewed by Akin, 41 and Adam, 6.5
Akin: I have to admit, I came to Monsters University with all sorts of doubts. Why wait more than a decade before conjuring up a prequel? Would Pixar/Disney remain true to the canon? Could they? Mike and Sully were a great odd couple first time around. Maybe it is worth doing over. After all, everything’s getting re-booted nowadays. I mean, Monsters Inc. wasn’t the great Pixar animation, but it was built around a clever premise.
Adam: Daddy took me to the cinema. It was (hurried consultation for the right phrase in English) 3-D, and I don’t always like wearing the glasses. But it’s OK.
Akin: The premise is simple but effective: Monsters are made, not born. Mike (voiced by Billy Crystal) is nebbish and weedy but has been in love forever with the idea of becoming a Scarer. Scarers are the heroes of Monstropolis; generating power for the city through children’s screams. (It’s a lot more cuddly than it sounds.) But to become one, first Mike needs to get into the elite Monsters University, where the competition is intense.
Adam: Mike has one eye. But he’s not scary, he’s funny.
Akin: Sully (John Goodman) is a big bluff jock, with a congenial air and the inclination to coast rather than work hard. He comes from a distinguished line of Scarers, and is used to privilege coming to him.
Adam: Sully is big and cuddly and REALLY scary.
Akin: A lot has happened in the world of family-friendly films since Monsters Inc, way back in 2001. It’s the rare family film that doesn’t attempt to appeal to multiple audience demographics; it’s the rarer one that successfully manages to square that particular circle. (There’s no real reason why they ought to, if you think about it: but that’s the nature of the beast created by the film industry, all the better to boost box office receipts.) Monsters University, it should be said, does make a good fist of the rather limited resources at its disposal, though. (Loyalty to the canon, remember?) College life is dominated by cliques – the cool guys and the nerds. Mike and Sully start off at opposite ends of the divide, but through a sequence of misadventures wind up in the same mediocre fraternity, Oozma Kappa. Mike is determined to prove his worth, to himself and the extremely sceptical head of faculty, Dame Hardscrabble (a chilly Helen Mirren – her English accent giveaway that she’s the designated baddy.)
Adam: A lot happens. Mike and Sully chase a pig. They don’t do their exams well. They join the same club…OK is a funny name for a club, isn’t it, Daddy?
Akin: I didn’t actually think about that.
Adam: There’s a competition: Which is the best Scarer club? Mike really really wants his club to win…
Akin: It is more than that, I think. Mike’s fraternity…Mike’s club has to win for him to continue studying to be a Scarer. It’s very difficult. No-one else in his club is very good, though, or at least so Mike thinks…what did you think about the 3-D, Adam?
Adam: I didn’t like the glasses. They kept falling down. But after a bit, I didn’t notice.
Akin: Mercifully, the 3-D isn’t retrofitted, but does seem a bit superfluous most of the time. The animation is solid rather than exceptional. Goodman and Crystal are both competent, although the avatar/actualite intersection is useful, if not terribly inspired, visual shorthand.
(At this point, Adam asks who Billy Crystal is. Given Adam’s lack of familiarity with the actor’s biggest hits – Analyse This/That, City Slickers, When Harry Met Sally – Akin is forced to concede that the voice casting may actually be more effective than he gave it credit for being, perhaps less reliant than he thought on actors’ public persona.)
Akin: Monsters University falls somewhere in the middle of the family-friendly animation continuum. It’s no Toy Story, for instance, lacking that genuinely universal narrative that works as effectively for adults as it does for children. But it isn’t either A Shark’s Tale, which rather lazily traded on adult-relevant reference points and hoped for the child audience to be swept along on its coat-tails (should that be fish-tales?). It’s unfair to call Monsters University derivative – let’s face it, there aren’t that many films nowadays that come up with a completely unique and original orientation. It is entertaining, but in a largely predictable fashion.
Adam: I didn’t like it.
Akin: No?
Adam: I REALLY liked it. And you know what I liked most about it? The lesson.
Akin: There’s a lesson?
Adam: (Rolls his eyes)Ye-ah. (Slight spoiler alert) You shouldn’t think that you’ve won until the very, very end.
Akin: Oh. I must have missed that. Perhaps I ought to watch it again?
Adam: Can we? Please?
Monsters University opens today in Israeli theatres.
Monsters University (US, 2013, 110 min, English with Hebrew subtitles, or Hebrew dub)
Directed by Dan Scanlon; Cast: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Helen Mirren.
