MONSTERS UNIVERSITY: in cinemas now [short review]

Monsters University (2013)
Directed by: Dan Scanlon
Written by: Dan Scanlon, Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird
Starring: Billy Crystal, Helen Mirren, John Goodman, Steven Buscemi

IN CINEMAS NOW

RUNNING TIME: 104 min

REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera, Official HCF Critic

After a visit to Monsters Inc., where monsters train to enter the human world to scare children at night and harvest their screams as energy to power the monster world, Michael “Mike” Wazowski, a six-year-old monster, dreams of being a scarer when he grows up. Eleven years later, Mike is a scare major at Monsters University. On his first day, he meets his new roommate, Randall “Randy” Boggs, a nerdy monster that can turn invisible, but his real competition is an arrogant large blue monster named James P. “Sulley” Sullivan who keeps interrupting Mike. The class is also informed by Dean Hardscrabble, the strict Dean of the scare program, that they must pass their final exam of the semester to continue in the program….

Enjoyable and well-crafted as their films still are, Pixar definitely seem to be taking the easy route of late, with sequels, prequels and spinoffs dominating their schedule. Even the supposedly original Brave was more of an uninspired rehash of other stuff. The risk-taking and brilliant innovation of films like Wall-E, Ratatouille and Up seems to be a thing of the past. Monsters University is a very decent prequel to Monsters Inc and at times nice and intelligent. It gives the unusual but true message that chasing your dreams could be a waste of time, while throughout putting a fun spin of college dramas and comedies. Billy Crystal and John Goodman retain their great chemistry, while the members of the fraternity that finally excepts them are a fun bunch and technically there are some stunning shots which I wanted to freeze frame so I could study all the detail of the countless monsters there. But the film never kicks into high gear, with even the humour amusing but no more than that, while it all seems to end, then start up again. The last twenty minutes are on a much higher level and seem to be where the REAL Pixar movie starts, but then it ends. Fun, and certainly not a waste of time for adults, but nothing special, and Pixar films used to be exactly that . The proceeding short The Blue Umbrella looks fantastic and is as is increasingly the case better than the feature it supports, but it  retreads Paperman.

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