MONSTERS UNIVERSITY (2013)

MONSTERS UNIVERSITY (2013)

Tagline: School Never Looked This Scary

(Comedy, Adventure, Animation) [G]

That's for the university president to decide, but I can assure you we'll always be watching these two. Always watching.

After watching the first movie when it came out, I was pretty blown away by how creative it was. This movie however takes things to another level and it’s likely in a crowded 2013 movie season, I just missed this thing until recently. 

In this one, Mike Wazowski (voiced by Billy Crystal) had always wanted to be a “scarer”. These were monsters that got jobs literally scaring the crap out of kids at night. So, you know, everyone has to have goals I guess. Anyway, he kind of sucks at it so it takes a ton of study for him to get good as he starts to attend Monsters University. Through an interesting set of circumstances, he winds up paring up with James P. Sullivan or “Sully” (voiced by John Goodman) in a scare competition that could keep them both in a University they were set to get kicked out of. This movie covers a rivalry that would end up becoming a lifelong friendship. 

First off the animation in this movie is incredible. For the time they did a good job with the fur on Sully, but this movie takes animation to a whole new level regarding how smoothly everything flows in this world. They also did a lot of creative leg stretching on this movie. We get a ton of different monsters to look at and everything from a monster as simple as Mike, to a dragon with centipede legs running the University. Artistically this one knocks it out of the park for kids, mostly, but there are some cool elements for adults as well.

Story-wise I can see where some people might not have loved this one as much as the first installment. Sully is rough around the edges which is quite different from his more tender-hearted nature in the first film. Because of the friction between Mike and Sully both aren’t really all that likable in this movie for a large majority of it. I actually found myself liking Mike and Sully’s Oozma Kappa (OK) fraternity brothers more than those two. Aside from Mike and Sully we also get introduced to a much more innocent and likable Randy (voiced by Steve Buscemi) in this movie. I won’t say how things went sideways with him, but I did like that they managed to get him involved. We even have a Roz (voiced by Bob Peterson) sighting. 

One of the coolest aspects of this movie is the “Scare Games” which a lot of the movie centers around. I think this allowed the creative team to really branch out and show us some different cool elements and monster talents never brought out in the original. 

While I do have a soft spot for MONSTERS INC, MONSTERS UNIVERSITY is actually the better of the two films hands down. I give MONSTERS UNIVERSITY a 5 out of 7, but I can see most kids giving this a 7.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF WALT DISNEY PICTURES AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.