Monsters, Inc. 720p - (2001 Lang: English)

The best computer animated film of them all, and the most adult!

Until now I couldn't bring myself to believe that computer animation was the equal of either stop motion animation or hand-drawn animation. All computer animated films looked a little (usually more than a little) too sterile, many were animated poorly ("Antz", "Shrek", "Final Fantasy"), and even the single unqualified success ("Toy Story 2") provided little evidence that a computer animated film COULD reach the heights other kinds of animation could. "Toy Story 2" had flawless character animation, but nothing as inspired as the best in "Tarzan" (released the same year, although I could have chosen almost any other Disney cartoon to make my point); effective art direction, but nothing to match "Fantasia" or "The Nightmare Before Christmas". And I thought that "Toy Story 2" was as good as the art was ever going to get.

I was wrong. This is far better. And what's more, there's no sense whatever that the script (an unusually rich and uninhibited script) is bumping up against the limits of what the medium will allow. It's now been proven that computer animation CAN be just as good as any other kind. Whether it will be allowed to be in future is another question, but for now, I'm hopeful. What we have here is computer animation's first ENTIRELY unalloyed artistic delight, with every character gracefully and characteristically animated, every virtual set just right and pleasing to look at, and an eye-tickling mastery of colour, light and shade that I thought would forever elude CGI artists.

It's not fair to judge anything good as "Monsters, Inc." as though it were a children's movie, but I can't resist comparing it with "Shrek" - which emphatically IS a children's movie. "Monsters, inc." is admittedly ABOUT children, in a sort of a way. The inhabitants of Monstropolis rely on children's screams for their energy, and the central story is kicked off when one of the monsters accidentally brings a small child (which he calls "Boo") into the city. But we never see things from her point of view. We see things from the point of view of the monsters, who are all adults - and who, like most adults, see children as frightening, almost incomprehensible members of another species. And they ARE. To be sure, Wazowski comes to feel strong affection for Boo, but she never becomes more than a humanoid pet (which is not to demean the relationship). This is a story about adults looking at childhood from the outside.

Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Featuring the voices of John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn, and Jennifer Tilly, the film was directed by Pete Docter as his directorial debut, co-directed by Lee Unkrich and David Silverman, and executive produced by John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton.

The film centers on two monsters employed at the titular Monsters, Inc.: top scarer James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (John Goodman) and his one-eyed partner and best friend Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal). Monsters, Inc. employees generate their city's power by targeting and scaring children, but they are themselves afraid that the children may contaminate them; when one child enters Monstropolis, Mike and Sulley must return her.

Docter began developing the film in 1996 and wrote the story with Jill Culton, Jeff Pidgeon, and Ralph Eggleston. Fellow Pixar director Andrew Stanton wrote the screenplay with screenwriter Daniel Gerson. The characters went through many incarnations over the film's five-year production process. The technical team and animators found new ways to render fur and cloth realistically for the film. Randy Newman, who composed the music for Pixar's three prior films, returned to compose its fourth.

Monsters, Inc. was praised by critics and proved to be a major box office success from its release on November 2, 2001, generating over $577 million worldwide. Monsters, Inc. saw a 3D re-release in theaters on December 19, 2012. 12 years later, a prequel, Monsters University, directed by Dan Scanlon, was released on June 21, 2013.

The city of Monstropolis in the monster world is powered by energy from the screams of human children. At the Monsters, Inc. factory, skilled monsters employed as "scarers" venture into the human world to scare children and harvest their screams, through doors that activate portals to the children's bedroom closets. It is considered dangerous work, as human children are believed to be "toxic". Energy production is falling because children are becoming less easily scared, and company chairman Henry J. Waternoose is determined to find a solution. James P. "Sulley" Sullivan is the organization's top scarer, but his chief rival, chameleon-like monster Randall Boggs, is close behind.

One day, Sulley discovers that Randall has left a door activated on the scare floor, and a small girl has entered the factory. After several desperate failed attempts to put her back, Sulley conceals her and takes her out of the factory. He interrupts his best friend Mike Wazowski's date with his girlfriend Celia, and chaos erupts when the child is discovered. Sulley and Mike manage to escape with the child before the Child Detection Agency (CDA) quarantines the restaurant, and back at their home, discover that she is not actually toxic after all. Sulley grows attached to her and calls her "Boo", while Mike is just anxious to be rid of her.

When they smuggle her back into the factory in an attempt to send her home, Randall discovers her and tries to kidnap her, but mistakenly kidnaps Mike instead. He straps Mike to a large machine called "The Scream Extractor", which he intends to use to revolutionize the scaring industry and solve the monster world's energy problems by forcefully extracting screams from kidnapped human children, though not without harming them in the process. Before Randall can use the machine on Mike, Sulley intervenes and reports Randall to Waternoose. Waternoose, secretly in league with Randall, instead exiles Mike and Sulley to the human world in the Himalayas. The two are taken in by a Yeti, who suggests they travel to a nearby village to return to the monster world. Sulley prepares to leave, but Mike angrily refuses to go with him. Meanwhile, Randall is preparing to use the Scream Extractor on Boo, but Sulley arrives and saves her. Randall and Sulley fight, and after Mike returns and the two reconcile, they overpower Randall, take Boo and flee.

Randall pursues them to the giant door vault, and a wild chase ensues among the millions of doors as they move in and out of the storage vault on rails to the factory floor. Boo's laughter causes all the doors to activate, allowing the chase to pass in and out of the human world. Randall attempts to kill Sulley, but Boo overcomes her fear and attacks him. Sulley and Mike trap Randall in the human world, where two residents at a trailer park beat him with a shovel, mistaking him for an alligator. Sulley and Mike then trick Waternoose into revealing his plot with Randall, while Mike secretly records the entire conversation. The CDA then arrests Waternoose, and Sulley and Mike say goodbye to Boo and return her home before her door is shredded to prevent any more contact with her.

With the factory temporarily shut down, Sulley is named the new CEO of Monsters, Inc. Under his leadership, the energy crisis is solved by harvesting children's laughter instead of screams, as laughter has been found to be much more potent. Mike takes Sulley aside, revealing he has rebuilt Boo's door, and only needs one final piece, which Sulley took as a memento. Sulley enters and joyfully reunites with Boo.

"Shrek", of course, is a children's movie through and through. Its attention span is short, it has an unthinking mean streak, and children will have a whale of a time watching the central characters (the bigger they are, the more fun it is) act childishly and make poo-poo jokes. "Monsters, Inc." has too much genuine wit, characters too rich, a world with too much depth, and a story at once too coherent and too complicated, to be PRIMARILY a film for children. This is not to say children won't like it. Maybe they will. (Who can say?) Here's the bonus: if they DO like it, it will (unlike "Shrek") actually have a beneficial effect. It will make them less frightened of the dark.