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Monsters, Inc.
***
Cinema Releases - February 8, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate U. 92 minutes.
Directed by Pete Docter. Written by Dan Gerson, Andrew Stanton from a story
by Jill Culton, Peter Docter, Ralph Eggerston, Jeff Pidgeon. With the voices
of John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Mary Gibbs, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn,
Jennifer Tilly, John Ratzenberger.
"Monsters, Inc." is the new
computer-animated feature from Pixar, the production company that gave us
"Toy Story" -- and like that modern classic, this movie puts playful spin
on childhood legend. Yes, the film agrees, there are monsters lurking in
the vicinity of our bedrooms... but it's them who are scared of
us.
The main vocal performances come from John Goodman
and Billy Crystal, who play monsters working at an energy plant. The monster
world gets its energy from scares, you see -- the power companies use portals
to let monsters enter the rooms of human children, scare them, and bottle
the energy generated by the screams. Business isn't doing so well, we learn,
because "Kids just don't scare like they used to!" Cut to an amusing little
sidebar in which a desensitised slacker toddler mopes over his cereal in
front of a television set.
We also learn that those in the monster world
are terrified of human germs. "If a kid ever got in here," declares an executive,
"the results would be catastrophic!" Of course a kid does indeed slip through
the cracks, and the plot of "Monsters, Inc." follows Goodman and Crystal
as they clumsily attempt to cover up their mistake by keeping the kid safe
and sneaking her back to human society.
Maybe I've made the plot sound scary, but if you're
familiar with the work of Pixar or have seen the trailers for the movie,
then you will know that "Monsters, Inc." has pleasing, vibrant visuals and
groovy, inventive-looking creatures of diverse shapes, sizes, hair patterns,
forms of teeth and numbers of eyes. I especially like the goo-monster who
carelessly walks over a grid, leaks into it, and simply sighs "Aw,
nuts!"
The movie has gloriously fluid animation, energetic
voice-overs (the supporting cast includes James Coburn, Jennifer Tilly and
Steve Buscemi) and nice humour, by way of both slapstick and in-jokes. I
expected nothing less -- "Toy Story" and "Shrek" have set high standards
for this type of movie, and "Monsters, Inc" is not entirely original. But
it has a stream of well-executed gags, a pleasing level of energy, and works
just fine as a blast of escapist joy.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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