Monsters, Inc. (2001)

So in September I decided to subscribe to Disney because all signs were that a movie I wanted to look at was there (Amelie), but then when I did subscribe in October it was already gone. Why do streaming services do this peekaboo thing? Sometimes I feel like I could waste the rest of my life running down Criterion Channel “Leaving Soon” titles and still would never catch up. Attempting to make lemonade, I decided to spend my month of Disney looking at Pixar pictures I still hadn’t seen. The first and main thing about Monsters, Inc., not surprisingly, is the excellence of the animation, which is stylish and always fun. Then I noticed for once I could recognize the voices of the main characters without having to look them up. John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Billy Crystal—well, Crystal was merely vexingly familiar, and I did have to look that one up. The Monsters, Inc. premise is all pro forma but reasonably clever. There’s a place where monsters live, called Monstropolis, and the energy there is powered by children’s screams. A whole factory system has been worked up for monsters to get jobs going into children’s bedrooms at night by way of their closets, do scary things, and collect the screams. It turns out the monsters are as afraid of children as children are of them. Ultimately one little girl makes it into Monstropolis and various hijinks ensue. Among other things our main monster, Sullivan (Goodman), finds that she is too adorable to destroy (admittedly, she is quite adorable) and he works to protect her. Sullivan is a pretty good character overall, furry and blue with purple highlights, but I have to say he reminded me of Shrek from another animated movie that also came out in 2001—both the kindly affection and the ogre-like oversized body. I know animated pictures have long lead times, so I doubt anyone was copping anything off anybody else. Monsters, Inc. is the better picture if the IMDb Top 250 Movies list is anything to go by—it’s on it whereas Shrek is not, at least when I looked just now (in October). Monsters, Inc. reminded me again how starved we were for sophisticated animated pictures like this in the ‘70s, where the hardest-core among us lived off the old Disney features and Fleischer cartoons in revival houses with folding chairs. Those old Disneys are masterfully done, I can admit now, but I had a beef with Disney back then that lingers on. I prefer what came in the wake of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, with the animation fully funded (unlike, say, Hanna-Barbera’s Scooby Doo, Where Are You! TV series, which is charming and everything, maybe even culturally revolutionary, but cheap). I also like scripts that are full of sly jokes for the grownups. But that is something someone who loves Daffy Duck and Bullwinkle would think. Monsters, Inc.? Yes, absolutely, if you like a cartoon show don’t miss it if you can.