Better Late Than Never on "Monsters Inc"

Over the weekend my wife was the picker of the movie we watched. My daughter and I both mentioned that we had never seen "Monsters Inc". My daughter has seen "Monsters University", my wife has seen both, but I haven't seen either. Our son was at a sleepover, and we invited our daughter to join us for our date night movie. So we sat back and watched "Monsters Inc".

I loved this movie. I was so enamored at how well made and how well written this movie was. "Monsters Inc" came out in 2001. I was 18. This movie looked as good as most Pixar movies do today. That was the first thing that caught my attention. Pixar is second to none when it comes to animated movies. The animators know what they're doing. Pixar seems to have hired the best in the business, and it has been that way since the very beginning. The monsters in this movie looked real. From top to bottom they looked real. From the teeth to their hair to the way they moved, it all looked great. Every other animated thing in the movie looked good as well. The rooms looked great. The office building had a nice feel to it. The restaurants were cool. Even the tiny details in the kids rooms looked good.

Then you have the story that goes along with this movie. "Monsters Inc" is all about this company slowly going bankrupt because they aren't getting enough screams to keep the business moving. That is the crux of the movie. We have Sully, voiced by John Goodman. He is the best in the game. He is the top monster that all the other monsters look to. Mike Wisowski, voiced by Billy Crystal, is his cohort. He works with Sully. He is the comic relief. He isn't that good at scaring anyone, but he is Sully's right hand man. They run the show. Steve Buscemi plays the villain, and he is wonderful in this as well. We have a bunch of other people, but these are the main monsters we follow during the movie. We also have Boo, who is the  young child that infiltrates the monster's business. That was the hook that got me in this movie. The whole idea was that monsters have to scare kids to keep their city running, but the monsters are actually terrified of humans. They are worried that humans will take over their city by scaring all of the monsters and taking their screams away. When Boo first shows up, Sully is so scared of her. It is a nice change of pace. Ever since we were kids, we were always afraid of the "monsters in the closet". This movie takes that and turns it on its head. After Boo shows up, the whole movie becomes about getting her back by any means necessary. Boo is only afraid of one monster, and that is Buscemi's monster. She has no fear around any other monster. She calls Sully kitty. That is how unafraid she is. Mike Wisowski is also trying his best to get her home, but that is because he wants to get back to his girlfriend and their life together.

The movie is fast, fun and exciting. I love the chase scene at the end. I thought that Goodman was perfectly voice-cast as Sully. He has this booming voice that can be scary at times, but he is also such a nice, gentle giant. That came off very well. Billy Crystal was hilarious. Performances like this remind me that Crystal is a good comedic actor. When given great lines to perform, he can crush them. Buscemi was so good as the creepy villain. He embodied the lizard or gecko or whatever creature he was playing. The boss, voiced by James Coburn, had this air and aura about him. He went out on a very high note.

I wished I had watched this movie when it first released. I would have loved it just as much back then. But I'm glad that my wife remedied this for me and picked it for date night. When animated movies are made like this it makes me so happy and optimistic that Pixar can make more and more of these. "Monsters Inc" was incredible and I cannot wait to see ""Monsters University" next. 

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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