Animals House meets Monster Mash

After the Cars 2 debacle, there was some noticeable apprehension among Pixar fans when word trickled out that Monsters Inc. would get a prequel. So I won’t tease a riddle in front of you, I’ll just blurt it out: Monsters University is a worthy and spirited follow-up to a Pixar classic.

In short: Pixar didn’t ruin it. Not that the animation company, now a Disney property, has a habit of ruining things; it’s just dangerous to tinker with the classics, especially considering that Disney is now on something like Little Mermaid 4, Peter Pan 8 and many other direct-to-VHS cash-grabs.

Monsters University takes place many years before the scare-floor events of Monsters Inc., back when green one-eyed beach ball Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and blue mammoth James P. Sullivan were starting college to become professional scarers. (In case you forgot, monsters frighten human children while they sleep to generate screams, which powers the monster world.) They both enroll at Monster’s University, the Harvard of scream. Mike, wide-eyed and book smart, naturally detests Sulley, a natural scarer whose dad left a tall MU legacy. A rivalry blossoms.

Like the first movie, University is endlessly inventive and witty. Invoking the spirit of college, it throws in all kinds of little college humor: hacky sack on the university lawn, reheated food at the union, secret fraternal orders with mysterious initiation ceremonies, that one kid who never took pen and paper to class, and lots of dorm-room horror. Shocker: Mike doesn’t room with Sulley, but with chameleon Randall (Steve Buscemi), who will go on to become the villain in the Monster’s timeline.

Sulley and Mike both enter the difficult scarer program, the most prestigious field of study at MU. Other fields include scare-can design, closet door fabrication and scare theory, but the top students all go on to be scarers, which is why Mike and Sulley compete against each other so fiercely. Eventually they’re booted from the program, though, after humiliating their professor, who looks like one of those terrifying mantis shrimp creatures. The only way they can get back into the program is by competing in the Scare Games, an intramural set of events organized by the fraternities and sororities, including Roar Omega Roar, a bunch of meatheads with popped shirt collars.

The lack of villains and any sort of heavy-handed conflict makes the film especially family friendly and light. There’s a silent fetch game in the library, a review of scare tactics, a maze of unfazed teens, a simulated bedroom with mannequin child, and a team race involving allergy-activating balls of thorns. The entire movie is rather harmless. Even its thrills late in the movie, at an all-girls summer sleep-away camp, are cheery and fun.

I especially enjoyed how the film focuses more on Mike (whereas Inc. more prominently featured Sulley) and his questionable career as a professional scarer. Mike’s a brilliant strategist, but his instincts on the scare floor are terrible. Mostly he’s just not frightening, which is the ultimate humiliation for a monster. The movie makes a case that not everyone can be the star player; sometimes we have to pass the ball to help the team most. It’s an inspirational message for Generation Me so I hope audiences admire the complexity at which it develops across the film’s vibrantly colored and pleasingly paced story. Sulley really drives it home late in the film as he tells Mike: “You may not be scary, but you’re fearless.”

Crystal and Goodman are solid performers, and their Mike and Sulley are two of the great Pixar pairings, right up there with Woody and Buzz. What surprised me most, though, was the rag-tag group of new characters in Mike and Sulley’s frat, Oozma Kappa: the two-headed Terry and Terri, pink sludge and momma’s boy Squishy, and Art, a Muppet-like goofball who will surely be a fan favorite. Squishy’s mother also has a prominent role, though always in the background. There she is doing laundry during the secret frat initiation rite. There she is listening to heavy metal with curlers in her monster do while she waits for her son and his new buddies to sneak into Monsters Inc., the company, not the movie. I found myself continuously howling at the spontaneous gags this movie threw at me.

Go see Monsters University. You will not see a more delightful animated movie this year. And if you ever waivered in your support of Pixar, let it earn it back now with this hilarious gem.

(As usual with a Pixar movie, I'm adding pretty much every photo that was made available to me. Expand the post three photos down to get the rest of the stills. Enjoy!)

Monster's University concept gallery

 

 

Pixar is brave, but not entirely original

Brave is a splendid experience, but it feels more like a Disney movie than a Pixar one, with its fairy tale plot full of transforming forest creatures, plucky princesses and a crooked old witch with her bubbling cauldrons.

Did Pixar raid the Disney vault, or did Disney turn the vault over and shake it over Pixar, like pepper on a bowl of stew? It's hard to determine now that the two companies are one.

By invoking these Disney tropes, though, Brave and Pixar are hearkening back to Disney's classic era of hand-drawn animation that includes films like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid. I'm curious about their intentions. To see if Pixar could do an old-fashioned Disney movie? If so, then Brave is a rousing success. If they did it to reinvent the fairy tale, then they fall drastically short — consider Brave on par with either of Disney's last fairy tale movies, the perfectly enjoyable duo of Tangled and The Princess and the Frog.

I question the motives of the movie and its makers, but please know that I loved this picture. It is a fully realized and beautifully designed animated adventure. It may use all the building blocks of a Disney fairy tale, but it uses them in ingenious ways. Yes, we might have seen these things done before, but never like this, and never in a Pixar movie.

In the Scottish highlands a royal family must arrange a wedding for their daughter with an independent streak amid all those tangles of red hair. This is Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald), a free-spirited teenager who would rather roam the countryside shooting arrows at her favorite trees than be prim and proper or bound up in some corset on a wooden throne.

Merida embarrasses her family at an archery tournament where she's supposed to pick a husband. Her refusal to pick, and the way she refuses, sparks a mock conflict between her father, the burly one-legged Fergus (Billy Connolly), and the leaders of three other royal families — including one kilted droog who would make a great plotline on Game of Thrones, and another dressed like William Wallace in Braveheart.

Merida's family drama underscores the film's ultimate message about fate and destiny, and how women within this kingdom don't get to have a say in their futures. This is probably where I should tell you that Merida is Pixar's first female protagonist in the studio's history. It's unfortunate the way Merida expresses her independence is with a man's weapon, but nevermind that.

I'm hesitant to discuss the plot further because the film's advertising has left out some major developments, which created surprises for me in my viewing. Just know that a friendly bear turns up that will upend Merida's life if she doesn't get some advice from a wrinkly old witch who moonlights as a woodcarver of exceeding talent. The witch has a remarkably simple voicemail system: "For Option 1 please dump the green vial in the cauldron. For Option 2, please dump the red vial …"

It is refreshing to see the plot being pushed forward by women, including Merida and her patient mother (Emma Thompson). The men are given lots of comedic moments, including a fort battle in the castle keep, but they are mostly background filler to the dreams, hopes and desires of the female characters. And just look at Merida, what a striking character and screen presence. (Her hair definitely helps; never has hair moved so realistically in an animated movie.)

This is not Pixar's greatest movie — that goes to WALL•E — nor is it anywhere near the abysmal and wretched Cars 2. It's mostly an entirely average Pixar movie, and an above-average Disney movie. Yes, they have different scales, because Pixar is so meticulous, so exact, so perfect at designing plots for their movies to sit in. This film looked fantastic, and had just the right combination of laughs, tender character moments and thrills. But the plot felt recycled, and it made me curious as to why a company known for their one-of-a-kind stories would turn to an idea as overdone as a fairy tale.

Many more photos after the jump.

Brave concept art reveals deeper beauty

 

Pixar's concept art is always incredible. Even the concept art for Cars 2, a Pixar movie reviled by everyone except infants and people in comas, was pretty nifty. Here is some Brave artwork that is wonderful. Review to come shortly. 

Cars 2 promo art … and lots of it

I'll admit I'm very skeptical of Cars 2. The original Cars was the first Pixar movie that seemed to fall short of the high expectations the animation studio was setting for itself. I'm hardly alone when I say that it creeped me out a little with those plasticy human faces on the front of automobiles.

The second one drifts into theaters next week. Check out some of the film's concept art. It's all hand painted in soft hues and delicate strokes, and it kinda makes me want to see a film that looks like these paintings, which of course Cars 2 does not. All photos are clickable.

Now check out these rather nifty fake travel posters:

As if all that wasn't enough, here is the combined three-panel poster that has been hanging in theaters lately. Damn, these Pixar folks are clever.