Copyright
© 2001 by Michael
Segers,
All rights Reserved
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Cast? Director? Other details?
Check out Monsters Inc.
Walking out of the theater after watching Monsters
Inc., I realized that the highest critical acclaim for a
movie so far this year was been for Shrek
and last year for Chicken
Run. What’s
going on here? Especially since it
is likely that Monsters Inc. is going to end up on some ten-best lists
this year. Like Shrek, the
current venture taps into a world that we all can find lying around inside our
heads somewhere. In this case, it
is not the world in which fairy tale critters could be taken at face value but
the world in which behind ever closet door and under every bed was a thing,
nameless, poised to strike!
But
MI adds a couple of wrinkles. First,
why are monsters so attracted to children’s rooms?
Because they harvest children’s screams and convert them into power. And, second, a very intriguing revelation, monsters are as
afraid of children as children are of monsters… even the terrifying Sulley
(John Goodman), who sets the record for scaring kids, with a little help from
his one-eyed buddy, Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal).
So, imagine the complications when a little girl named Boo (Mary Gibbs)
gets caught in the monsters’ world.
Do
join her for the ride. There
is fun, there is fascination, there is a simple gee-whiz factor every few frames
or so. You can get in touch with
your inner-three-year-old, while enjoying all the benefits of having an adult
perspective on things that seem to come right out of the headlines, such as a
fear of black-outs in Monstropolis (because children don’t scare as easily
anymore).
I
need to be careful with the word adult
in a review of MI, since this is a film that makes Shrek (with its
opening flatulence) seem just about X-rated.
The vocabulary is squeaky clean, and the humor actually relies upon
repartee, word-play, and character interaction rather than bodily fluids.
Hey, here’s a kiddie film you can take the kids to.
Like
Shrek, this film offers such high-tech animation (compared to the clay of
Chicken Run) that I was left wondering, where did they find real monsters
for this film? I’m constantly amazed by the expressiveness of today’s
animated characters, whose sometimes homely digital faces show far more
expression than the current crop of pretty girls and boys filling up more
“realistic” films. Sulley,
Mike, and company all care about what they are doing, and they make us care
about them. Sulley’s response to
Boo, the little girl who convinces him that children are not such monsters
themselves, provides some goose-bump moments.
POPCORN
Perhaps the most famous literary attempt to capture the vagaries of childhood is William Blake’s Songs of Innocence, usually paired with his Songs of Experience. Blake intended the poems to be read in his splendid visionary presentations—what would he have done with a computer? He had to get by with the help of angels. Anyway, you can view Blake's Songs pretty much as he intended them to be seen thanks to Princeton University and the University of Michigan. Hey, no one ever said maintaining a childish perspective on things would be easy!