Film - Monsters Inc.

With comparisons between Monsters and Nazi scientists, steven harris takes a look back at Monsters Inc...

Look, I don’t just watch animated movies, okay? I once saw Birth of a Nation by that old racist D.W. Griffith (or is it WD40?). And I’ve seen a YouTube of a dog doing a wee against a fence. But I’ve had the poorlies this year and animated movies are like chicken noddle soup for the noggin and eyes.

Yes they are.

So, Monster Stink. I mean Monsters Inc. it doesn’t stink at all. No, not in the least. Apart from it’s funny when they use ‘odorant’ instead of deodorant because they are monsters and don’t want to smell nice, they want to fucking reek.

Dan Goodman is a big monster called Sulley. His voice is anyway. Sulley is animated. Obvs. And Billy Crystal is Mike Wasowski, a little monster with one eye. (Let’s not do THOSE jokes and drag my review further into the gutter). Monsters Incorporated is the company which provides the energy for Monster world. And they provide that energy by scaring children in the night and capturing the energy of their screams.

Shitting hell, sounds barbaric and something that would freak the freaking freakery out of actual kids watching. Except it doesn’t because the monsters are kinda cute and not mean really. Apart from Randall who is a lizard, now you see him now he’s damned invisible bad monster who wants to torture children to increase the scare factor and thus provide more energy. He’s basically like Dr Mengele. And we all hate that Nazi bastard, don’t we? Even if he did invent methadone.

Funny reversal – monsters think kids are corrosive if they touch you so basically the monsters are more scared of the kids than the kids are of the monsters. But when Boo, a weeny girl who calls Sulley ‘Kitty’ and chuckles a lot unless she is going “Wah! Wah!” in a boo hoo sort of way, gets into the factory, Sulley works out that kids aren’t corrosive. He also works out that Randall and the factory owner, Mr Waternoose, are gits of the grittiest persuasion and are trying to use the torture thing on children for reals.

Hiding, discovery, banishment, return, chase scene, resolution. Yup, it’s a madcap Pixar movie. And it’s great. It really is. I haven’t seen the follow up, Monsters Pen & Inc (or whatever it’s actually called) but I have seen this one. It’s colourful but the language isn’t colourful – family film.

Randy Newman did the music, the most prominent of which is found at the end of the movie. Every time I hear Randy Newman songs in films, even when someone else is singing the words, I can’t help but think of the Family Guy piss-take where Randy Newman survives the apocalypse and sits in someone’s garden with a piano singing about everything people do. Like eating an apple. Or walking towards him. Or being cross with him for narrating their actions in mind-numbingly tedious detail.

And in song.

James Coburn voices Mr Waternoose (one of his last performances before deciding not to be alive any more) but doesn’t throw knives at anyone like he does in The Magnificent Seven. Just as well. Kids watching probably would get shitted up by a monster crab thing stabbing people. Or not. Kids today, eh? Not shitted up by monster crab things stabbing people. What’s the world coming to?

It’s coming to the end of this review.

Image - IMDb.