It's finally here. The prequel to one of the greatest and most memorable Pixar films ever conceived. The big question is...does it ruin the original!? Well, no. In fact, it completely surprised me with it's relevancy as a prequel! My expectations were pretty low after seeing the first teaser trailer. My initial reaction was, "Really!? College!? Why would you go to college to work in a factory!?" However, Pixar knows what they're doing and put the college theme to good use. The film tells the tale of Mike Wazowski's (voiced by Billy Crystal) plight to become the greatest "scarer" of all time. He follows this dream to Monsters University, a college in which only the greatest scarers graduate from. Alongside being an origin story for how everything in the original turned out, it also created an enjoyable family film with lots of hilarity and antics.
Liked: All of the voice acting was spot on and believable. All the voice actors fit their roles perfectly. John Goodman and James Buscemi return with Billy Crystal to re-assume their roles from the original. Speaking of Steve Buscemi, it was a pleasant surprise to see Randall getting a back-story along with Mike and Sully. I hadn't seen him in any of the trailers so it caught me completely off guard. Luckily, Randall plays a great role in the film by driving Mike's ambitions to win the Scare Games even further. The animation is top-notch as usual. Pixar doesn't disappoint when it comes to eye-candy. The campus is beautifully vast, my personal favorite detail being the very realistic and aesthetically beautiful trees. I know it seems like just a minor detail, but the trees really brought the setting to life. The story was well paced and intuitive. Some of the morals they conveyed were pretty spot on. Unfair genetics juxtaposed with jealousy was well implemented, along with the "everything eventually turns out okay" trope.
Disliked: I know I said the voice acting was good, but all the characters were just so boring. Even all the returning characters were boring. The mom character was really obnoxious and probably only thrown in for embarrassment humor. Some of the traditional college stereotypes were a bit too blatant, especially the Oozma Kappa team members. Also, there were about a million different variations of the line "You don't belong here!" or "You'll never make it!" constantly being shoved down my throat. Hearing that line be used over and over again got really annoying really fast. The rest of the cast weren't awful per-say but they just weren't anything compelling. I never really cared about any of them. That's why the scene where Mike and Sully are talking alongside the lake never really affected me. It was a beautiful scene with some iconic shots, but when each character opened up and confessed their feelings I didn't really feel bad, sad, or anything for that matter. Sure the issues they were touching upon were very real and relevant today, but my disinterest in the characters made the scene lack that emotional connection other Pixar films execute much better. I didn't like the cameo appearance of Roz as the chief of police at the end at all. The "always watching" joke worked in the original, not this one. The ending was a terrible cop-out and left a bad impression on me. It reintroduced a plot device that was touched upon for a whole five seconds. It made no logical sense and quite frankly made the relevance of Monsters University (the location not the film title) absolutely pointless. I wasn't too upset by it, but I'm sure it detested by many.
Monsters University is good. However, Pixar fans might be let down a bit, as it doesn't hold a candle to the original. I'm thankful that it wasn't a complete trainwreck, but I would've liked more.
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