MONSTERS UNIVERSITY: E Pluribus Anus

Twenty years ago Pixar Animation Studios revolutionized cinema with the first full length completely computer-generated film. Two decades later and Pixar is still one of the most consistently groundbreaking studios in the business. Leading up to the release of their new film The Good Dinosaur, I will be going through Pixar's entire filmography at the rate of two movies a week. We finish out our retrospective in disappointing fashion with the barren prequel Monsters University.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Dan Scanlon
Writers: Dan Scanlon, Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird
Cast: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Helen Mirren, Steve Buscemi, Peter Sohn, Joel Murray, Sean Hayes, Dave Foley, Charlie Day, John Ratzenberger
Runtime: 104 mins.
2013

In my Brave review, I mentioned that near the climax I wandered out of the room without even thinking about it. During Monsters University, on the other hand, I very consciously spent as much of the runtime as I could doing other things vaguely nearby the television. Of all the Pixar movies I've watched or rewatched for this retrospective, I was looking forward to Monsters University the least. I called Brave "wholly and unflinchingly average." MU takes it one step further and becomes crushingly average. This is a movie that has no reason to exist and never stops reminding you.

To be honest I'm tired of this series. I embarked upon it because I figured I would enjoy critically revisiting some of the great contemporary animated masterpieces, and I have, but the most recent arc of Pixar's filmography is incredibly deflating. Between the Cars movies, the botched diversity of Brave, and now the insipid pointlessness of MU, my personal stock in Pixar is at an all time low (which is still rather high compared to other studios).


As such I'm going to keep this review curt. There is one good sequence in MU, spoilers ahead in this paragraph I guess. I'm talking about Mike and Sulley's excursion to a campsite in our world. The art direction takes a dramatic turn away from the candy colored Monsterworld that we've been spoonfed for the entire movie, and lands our heroes incongruously in a dark, dirty, shockingly tangible world. This has got to be the best shot in the film.

It's a design choice that has a perfect symbiotic relationship with where the story needs to go at that point in the movie, and as such was the only time I felt connected to the narrative in any way.

That's because the rest of the movie is a big old whack off. Prequels are almost always conceptually bankrupt to begin with. The entire thrust of this movie is predicated on the goodness and desirability of our heroes ending up at Monsters, Inc., which the original movie tells us is absolutely not the case. These college students are striving to be a part of an organization predicated on the misunderstanding and abuse of an entire species' children. That would be a fruitful angle if the movie was interested in exploring it at all, but it certainly isn't. Instead, it jettisons all of the fascinating thematics of Monsters, Inc. in favor of a blase regurgitation of the moral we get to hear in every single kids movie ever: Learn to be yourself.

MU does violence to the original film in many ways, not the least of which is how it treats its characters. Mike's arc makes some sense, but nothing about the colossal asshat that is Sulley's character in this movie even remotely resembles the kind and warm yet driven monster of the original. The movie also makes Randall, the purple chameleon guy, college buddies with Mike and Sulley. This choice doesn't make any sense and it wraps up in a most painful on-the-nose prequel wink and nod. Not to mention that it dramatically diminishes Randall's genuinely sinister and unsettling Monsters, Inc. persona. Plus there's an absolutely boneheaded cameo by the Abominable Snowman that does not synthesize with his usage in the previous movie at all. It's like these guys are writing bad fan fiction.

And it is guys writing this movie, of course. Go ahead and add Dan, Daniel, and Robert to the ever increasing list of prototypical white guy names on the Pixar creative team. MU clearly has no interest in women, even though they presumably compose half of the university's population, and when the movie does take a few moments to acknowledge women it's usually in the form of a lazy stereotype played as a joke.

But in its defense (?), the vast majority of MU is entirely comprised of stereotypes. Monsters, Inc. both lampooned and deeply critiqued the corporate structure. Monsters University contents itself to hit us with every single college movie cliche it has ever encountered, but with monsters this time. There isn't a single joke or character moment in this entire film that resonates whatsoever with my college experience. The least believable part of the world they've built isn't the monsters: it's their fantastical amalgamation of Collegeland cobbled together from the sluicey runoff of other movies exploring the college experience. Much of it doesn't make any sense culturally. At one point all the main characters show up at a big old cliche college house party with flashing lights and dancing and stuff. It all feels rather uncanny because, to be frank, that sort of cultural gathering doesn't make the least bit of sense without sex, alcohol, or drugs, none of which can be in a Pixar movie for obvious reasons. I'm not saying you have to be involved in these things to have a college experience; I am saying the specific culture (namely, Greek culture) this movie has opted to portray is 100% fueled by them.

At least the movie had the good sense to cast Charlie Day, a choice that automatically bumps up the quality of any film.

Once again, Pixar doesn't have it in them to make an outright bad movie. The plot and the character arcs function as they should, and the story gets told without any glaring mistakes, unless you count a tremendous lack of imagination.

MU won't ruin your enjoyment of the original, but I would very much rather pretend it doesn't exist from hereon out. And so my Pixar retrospective wraps up with a whump. Thank God for Inside Out, or else I would be confident in proclaiming Pixar's unheard of reign to be at an unfortunate end.

2.5 / 5  BLOBS

The Short: The Blue Umbrella

OK. This has got to be the most bizarre thing Pixar has ever created. The story is the most unabashedly simple of all contemporary cinematic stories: two smitten heterosexuals are separated from each other then reunited. Unlike Lava this doesn't bother me here because the simplicity of the narrative serves to ground some absurd and uncanny animation. The two heterosexuals are, of course, umbrellas. We never get to see more than glimpses of the people carrying them, but the umbrellas are surrounded by observers in the form of sentient street grates, gutters, crosswalk signals, and store fronts. The choice of these as characters is fascinating, because they all share the trait of looking like they cannot feasibly be anthropomorphized. Then a couple of screws start twisting and you realize they are eyes, and that the sewer lid is smiling. There is a whole lot of weird smiling going on.

This uncanniness is spurred forth by some hyperrealistic environment design. As I started watching the short, I began to wonder if I had not accidentally stumbled upon a live action video also called The Blue Umbrella. That's how convincing the visuals are. I cannot properly describe the experience of watching this short, but I do know I love it. The Blue Umbrella does a better job of communicating the complex joys of rainfall than almost anything I've ever seen, and I am a sucker for the rain.

4.5/5