Monsters, Inc. ***** (2001, voices of Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn, Mary Gibbs) – Classic Movie Review 141

This massively delightful, deliciously quirky 2002 computer animation from Pixar, the makers of Toy Story and A Bug’s Life, is a guaranteed monster hit for all audiences, created with every ounce of the company’s originality and brilliance. It’s really very sweet and warm-hearted but it gains a nice little bit of edge from its frightening kids idea.

A baby girl called Boo (voice of Mary Gibbs) discovers monsters under her bed one night and accidentally takes a sneaky trip to Monstropolis. There she finds big, furry Sulley (voice of John Goodman) and his cute little one-eyed green pal Mike (voice of Billy Crystal) scaring children.

It seems the monsters are generating their city’s power by frightening kids, but they in turn are afraid of being contaminated by the children. Sulley is Monstropolis’s top scary guy, so he needs to do something about the monsters’ world being disrupted and send Boo back quickly before anyone finds out.

The animation is consistently amusing and inventive, the wisecracking script is always clever and funny, and Randy Newman’s catchy score is a total pleasure to listen to.

Goodman and Crystal form an extremely tasty double act, effortlessly amusing. Steve Buscemi is a brilliantly hissable villain, the chameleon-like lizard, Randall Boggs, Sulley’s main rival as a scarer, and James Coburn is another fine villain in Henry J Waternoose, Sulley’s boss, the head of Monsters, Inc, the city’s power company.

This quartet heads up one of those great voice casts that Pixar can assemble. They also include Pixar regular John Ratzenberger as the Abominable Snowman, Frank Oz as Fungus, Bonnie Hunt as Flint and Jennifer Tilly as Celia.

Twelve years later in 2013, Pixar came up with an equally delightful prequel, Monsters University, reuniting Sulley (voice of John Goodman) and Mike (voice of Billy Crystal).

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© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 141

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