Monsters University

2013 - ?/5

Where to start… with the good things I guess.

There are 3 certainties in life: death, taxes, and amazing animation in a Pixar movie. If you can count on one thing always being great with regards to a Pixar movie, its animation. Hands down, their animation has always been flawless. This cannot be argued.

So what else did I like about this movie? Well, the young version of Mike Wazowski (not voiced by Billy Crystal) was adorable! I still think that voice over actors did a great job and each voice suited the character.

Never thought the ‘bad’ would ever outweigh the ‘good’ in a Pixar movie, but here goes.

Monsters Inc. is one of my favourite Pixar movies, so when I heard a prequel is coming out, I knew I was going to see it, but I also knew it was a prequel. I’ll be honest. Pixar sequels (Toy Story aside; although the second one fell short) haven’t been that great. None have ever been as good as the first; which is the case for the majority of movies, animated or not.

It is an animated movie, but that doesn’t mean adults shouldn’t be able to enjoy it either. Pretty much all other Pixar movies has proved that. It seems as if this movie was targeted more so towards a very young audience, but oddly enough, its more so targeted towards university/college students (the ones that were young when Monsters Inc. came out). Typically Pixar movies have certain jokes/situations that are found funny by kids and adults. Pixar has always been able to keep a fine balance between entertaining kid and adult, so everyone leaves the theater happy.

When it comes to Monsters University, for adults, it brought nothing to the table. It was as if somebody had a checklist of things that needed to be included, and the director/creators of this movie went down the list and checked everything off. But what you ended up with, and it kills me to say this, is a movie that flat-lined from the beginning to end.

I didn’t laugh, not even a chuckle at any point – and that’s sad because this is a Pixar movie. There was no (what I’m going to call) “Pixar Magic” put into the making of this movie. It seemed as if people decided that there should be another Monsters movie, so they took the first idea that was thrown onto the table.

It lacked any originality and dragged most of the time. The University/College movie has been done many times before. This leads me into my next gripe: I don’t know anything about the American University/College system. Yes, I know what Fraternities and Sororities are, but other than their existence, nothing. So that's pretty much excluding everyone that knows nothing about the American system.

I can’t say that I liked it, but I didn’t hate it either; it just was. So my rating is in limbo. You’re pretty much just going to be starting at a screen blankly for 1.5 hours.