Review: Monsters University

Pixar certainly are churning out a lot of sequels of late, from the superb Toy Story 3 to the underwhelming Cars 2. But now, with Monsters University, there is the studio’s first prequel.

A prelude to the wonderful Monsters Inc., the film charts the meeting of protagonists Michael 'Mike' Wazowski and James P. 'Sulley' Sullivan (once again voiced by Billy Crystal and John Goodman) while students at The School of Scaring. But they start out as sworn rivals, not friends.

Monsters University begins with a charming prologue of a young Mike visiting the Scaring Floor at Monsters Inc. on a school trip. In the world of Monstropolis, energy is harnessed from the screams of children and the top profession for a monster is to be a Scarer – tasked with sneaking into children’s bedrooms at night to terrify them. Despite being a small and unassuming monster, Mike is determined to be a Scarer one day. With his optimism undiminished years on, Mike enrols at Monsters University to major in Scaring.

While Mike is a hard-working, book-smart student, Sulley slacks off work and takes it granted that scaring comes naturally to him – he’s a big monster who just has to growl. But circumstances force them to work together in the Scare Games, a competition between fraternities. Unfortunately for Mike and Sulley their team, ‘Oozma Kappa’, is decidedly the lamest fraternity on campus. But with dedication and some team work they might just succeed. In doing so, Mike and Sulley each learn the value of friendship and their own individual strengths as monsters.

Monsters University is an incredibly entertaining 110 minutes that will keep both children and adults engrossed throughout with numerous witty sight gags and in-jokes from Monsters Inc. Certainly, it is one of Pixar’s lightest films to date, intended to draw more laughter than tears from the audience. But this is perhaps Monsters University’s undoing – it doesn’t feel particularly ambitious or ground-breaking. It’s middling level Pixar on autopilot.

Still, that doesn’t diminish the sheer enjoyment of Monsters University, which is tightly-scripted and has a uniformly excellent voice cast; Helen Mirren as the sinister Dean Hardscrabble and Aubrey Plaza as the sarcastic head of the Greek Council particularly stand out. The film also cannot be faulted on a computer-animation front. Pixar remains the best animation studio in the industry and every frame of Monsters University is full of colourful creations and characters. 

Verdict: Monsters University is not as significant a work as its predecessor, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s fun family entertainment first and foremost and is brilliant in its own right.

8/10