Monsters Inc. (Pete Docter) 2001
For some reason, I don’t undergo the rapturous waves of joy
that seem to be commonplace when people watch Pixar’s animated features. Their
Toy Story films’ charm evaporated shortly after they began, and left my
head hurting from a combination of aural loudness and excessive camera motion.
A Bug’s Life was cute enough (or, perhaps, too cute), but was nowhere
near as original or engaging as Dreamworks’ Antz. It was a bit of a
stunner, then, when the first act of Monsters Inc., their latest film,
captured me. Whatever cynicism I had in me started to melt. The only complaints
that I could really muster were that the monsters’ homeland looked a bit too
close to modern day America (as opposed to a truly original, magical alternate
world a la Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’s ToonTown), and that the CGI look of the film wasn't quite as inspired as the paper cutout look of the opening credits sequence.
The cartoon’s premise is wonderfully clever. It follows a
group of monsters that work for a power plant as they are made to scare children
(whose screams generate energy for the monsters) by entering portals into their
bedroom closets. Times are troubled, however, since children are becoming more
and more desensitized to the monsters’ attempts to scare, due to media
desensitization. It seems monster-land is undergoing a California-style energy
crisis, and roaming blackouts are quickly becoming a possibility. This is great
stuff! The film’s visuals don’t attempt to stun us with realism, but instead
create an attractive alternate to stylized cel-based animation. The camera
doesn’t spin wildly just because it can, like it did in the Toy Story
films. This cartoon is “shot” almost like a normal movie.
The film’s setup is never delivered on, however. After about
a half hour of goodness, plot rears its ugly head. A child’s entrance into the
monster’s homeland creates a sense of hysteria (one that makes absolutely no
sense by the end of the film). The monsters attempts to rid themselves of this
child take up the remainder of the film, and nothing involved here is nearly as
inspired as the film’s setup. The kid they are plagued with is insufferably cute
and isn’t really a character so much as a prop (and an inconsistent one at that…
her actions seem to only affect the surroundings when humor is sure to ensue). A
few subplots, including a government conspiracy, emerge, but they don’t seem to
make much sense. It’s a shame that the filmmakers use the film’s last half to
ignore most of the rules that they inventively created in the film’s first half,
as the film began to establish an almost convincing charm. I don't mind flights
of fancy in a film, but I do like a consistent tone. This film fails to deliver
one. As the lack of logical and character consistency continued, this
cartoon became less and less likable to me. Still, it's a mildly pleasurable
diversion if such things don't bother you.
**
