‘Monsters University’ Proves a Worthwhile Return to a Beloved Pixar Property

Mike and Sully end up in a fraternity with a slew of other cast-offs,

who, surprise surprise, show there's more to them than there seems.

In reflecting on Monsters University, the recently released sequel to Monsters Inc., I can’t help being a bit amused by how meta a film Pixar has crafted.

Over the last few years, the Pixar brand has lost a bit of its luster. Three of the studio’s last four films have been sequels, while the one original work – last year’s Brave – was largely viewed as a slight effort, despite walking away with last year’s Oscar for Best Animated Film.

In reviewing Brave earlier this year, I agreed it was lower-tier Pixar, but suggested there was nothing wrong with being merely good. The folks at Pixar might agree, because the major lesson of Monsters University seems to be it’s okay to be okay.

The film shows how Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sully (John Goodman) meet as students at Monsters University, and the duo are immediately set up as adversaries, with Mike being a well-studied but unscary student, and Sully being an arrogant kid who believes he can coast on his innate ability and famous last name. After an argument between the two gets them kicked out of the “scarer program,” the two are forced to join Oozma Kappa (OK – get it?), the lamest fraternity on campus, for a chance to compete in the “Scare Games,” a Greek competition that, if won, will get them back into the scarer program.

Pixar made little Mike Wazowski ridiculously cute.

However, boiled down to its essence, this is a film about a boy with a dream, who, despite trying harder than everyone else and working nonstop to achieve said dream, ultimately fails because he just doesn’t have what it takes. Early in the film, the intimidating Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren) says scariness is the measure of a monster, and so, if you’re not scary, what worth can you have?

Even though the film indicates there’s value in failure, that’s still a pretty ballsy core to structure an animated kids’ movie around, especially since it is so at odds with the typical “you can do anything you set your mind to” spiel.

The timing of this film is worth noting since the children who first fell in love with these characters when Monsters Inc. was released in 2001 are now college-aged themselves. Some will achieve their dreams, but many more will not, and I expect this film will speak to many of them, not to mention the rest of us who will relate to Mike’s existential crisis. 

Unfortunately, as potent as the emotional throughline of the story is, the rest of the film is incredibly formulaic. This is Pixar’s take on the college underdog comedy typified by the likes of Revenge of the Nerds, and it moves along exactly as you’d expect, up to and including the triumphant moment when our seemingly hopeless ragtag team of misfits prevails over the douchey popular kids.

Making matters worse, almost no character beyond Mike and Sully is given more than a modicum of development, including their four fellow fraternity brothers. We’re meant to be emotionally invested in these guys, but they aren’t even afforded the development of the extra girls in piffle like The House Bunny. The crazy one voiced by Charlie Day brings some welcome zaniness to the table, but middle-aged monster and monster with mom are both underserved, while two-headed monster is almost pointless. Their names don’t matter; these descriptors are how most will remember them.

This picture was too funny not to include here.

To be fair, right when a normal college comedy would be ending, Monsters University takes a hard left turn into fertile thematic territory. Up until then, the film is mostly an amiable diversion, but the final 15 minutes really deepen the story and elevate the whole thing quite a bit.

Furthermore, while I generally feel prequels are pointless endeavors, I’ve got to give Pixar credit for crafting a story that stands on its own while simultaneously enhancing the original. The film has plenty of clever nods to Monsters Inc., including a well-handled subplot involving future nemesis Randall (Steve Buscemi), but, more than that, it deepens the connection between Mike and Sully, a partnership that did feel a bit one-sided in favor of scare-master Sully in the first outing. Here, they balance that out quite a bit.

Overall, this is middle-of-the-pack Pixar, more impressive than the likes of Cars, Brave, and A Bug’s Life, but not quite up to the level of the rest of the studio’s oeuvre. But at this point, it’s silly and unfair to keep measuring Pixar’s output against the likes of Toy Story, Wall-E and Ratatouille.

By the end of Monsters University, big dreamer Mike realizes it’s okay to be okay, but even that undersells what Pixar has accomplished here. As far as this film goes, it’s better to say it’s good to be good. B+

“Oz: The Great and Powerful” Provides Good Family Entertainment

The production designers and special effects coordinators brought their
A game to Oz: The Great and Powerful.

I went in to Sam Raimi's Oz: The Great and Powerful expecting something awful. Despite the talent involved, the trailers made the movie look annoyingly frenetic, and the flying monkey sidekick appeared to continue the Jar Jar Binks tradition of adding a terrible CGI character to a beloved classic.

Fortunately, the movie is nowhere near the trainwreck I had envisioned. On the contrary, it’s actually a majestically beautiful, involving and even heart-felt film that pays homage to the 1939 classic while still offering a fun standalone adventure.

Although the original L. Frank Baum stories are now in the public domain, MGM owns the rights to many of the iconic aspects most associated with this franchise, and so Disney was unable to include references to ruby slippers or any of the classic musical arrangements and songs. However, Raimi and his crew pay tribute to the original version whenever possible.

Most obviously, the film starts in a black-and-white Kansas and concludes with a presentation of gifts. In addition, our hero goes on a journey to kill a wicked witch to get what he desires, during which he encounters several characters reminiscent of people from his life back in Kansas. There are even nods to the melting effect of water, flight via bubbles, and the Gale family, as well as the cowardly lion and scarecrow (but no tin man as far as I could tell).

The narrative basically presents origin stories for both the Wizard and the Wicked Witch of the West, and while it succeeds with the former, the film’s handling of the Wicked Witch is half-baked at best.

Somehow, both CGI sidekicks prove to be positive elements of the film.

As the titular character, Oscar “Oz” Diggs (James Franco) gets the bulk of the screen time, and the film effectively portrays his evolution from selfish scoundrel to sacrificing savior. Although he is an egotistical manipulator and two-bit magician, he also looks up to Thomas Edison and aspires to his level of accomplishment. “I don’t want to be a good man,” he says. “I want to be a great man!”

Once in Oz, Oscar meets Theodora (Mila Kunis), a witch whose father once ruled the land before being betrayed and killed. Theodora falls in love with Oscar instantly and takes him to the Emerald City, proclaiming him to be the wizard prophesized to restore peace in Oz and become king. Once there, Theodora’s sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz) tells Oscar that he must find and kill her “evil” sister Glinda (Michelle Williams) to claim the throne. However, when he finally finds Glinda, Oscar realizes things are not as they first appeared.

The acting is mostly strong. Weisz and Williams fair best, which is hardly surprising given their impressive credentials and the fact that they basically each have one note to play. Franco, who was only cast after Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Depp both turned down the role, proves a good fit for the character. The actor has received a lot of attention for his avant-garde career choices and incessant desire to be a Renaissance man with some praising him for his ambition and others criticizing his actions as phony and self-aggrandizing. That dichotomy is perfect for the role of Oscar, and Franco proves a solid anchor for the film.

The miscast Kunis doesn’t fair as well. I’m a fan, but the actress doesn’t excel at portraying menacing evil. That being said, she’s been saddled with an impossible character, whose motivations and mood swings are laughably presented.

Despite that developmental misstep, the rest of the project is a fine-tuned engine. The opening scenes in Kansas are filled with foreshadowing, and the film earns many of its best payoff moments due to the pipe work laid in those early scenes. The production design, score and 3D effects are uniformly excellent. Even the CGI sidekicks – a winged monkey (Zach Braff) and an amazingly rendered china girl (Joey King) – effectively avoid all the possible pitfalls and prove to be integral reasons for why the movie works. B-

Despite Being a Muddled Mess, “Prometheus” is Still Worth Catching



As the ambiguous android David, F-bender continues to

prove why he's one of the most exciting actors around.

Going into this summer season, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus had about as much heat as any movie not named The Dark Knight Rises. A pseudo prequel to the Alien franchise Sir Ridley helped launch 33 years ago, the film was clouded in mystery and had built some great momentum with a slew of viral ads (one of which acts as a worthwhile epiologue to the film) and some haunting imagery.



I was one of the many who were pretty pumped to see the film, and, in fact, I saw it at an advance screening prior to its June 8 opening. And yet, here we are, over two months later, and I’ve still yet to write a word about it.

That’s partly because I’ve been busy with school and moving into the new house, but it’s also because I wasn’t sure exactly what to say. I didn’t have passionate love for it, but I also didn’t hate it, and so it sort of just receded to the background. In the end, I mostly agree with what is currently written on the Tomatometer consensus over at the film’s Rotten Tomatoes page: “Ridley Scott's ambitious quasi-prequel to Alien may not answer all of its big questions, but it's redeemed by its haunting visual grandeur and compelling performances -- particularly Michael Fassbender as a fastidious android.”

The film certainly is ambitious, and I can say with confidence that I was engrossed while watching it. The visuals are undeniably stunning (more on that in a bit) and there are two sequences in the film – the surgical abortion scene and the first foray into the Alien caves – that are just absolutely masterful, specifically the abortion one, which could go down as the best scene of the year. And while I wouldn’t say the performances are universally compelling (almost every character is vastly underdeveloped), Noomi Rapace certainly brought it and Michael Fassbender outright stole the film (this guy IS the next great Hollywood actor).

But, man, this is a problem movie. Generally speaking, I think the film faces unfair hurdles related to expectation. People expected an action movie in the vein of Alien and instead were presented with muddled existential ruminations strung together by a few action set pieces (at least one of which – the scene where Logan Marshall Green’s Charlie goes all Event Horizon on the crew – seems out of place and solely included to up the action quotient and off most of the cast).

This right here is in the running for best scene of the year.

In that respect, Prometheus was bound to disappoint even if it did deliver on all the esoteric stuff, and that kind of stinks, because I really liked the fact that Scott was willing to revisit Alien (and in fact, lift the film’s structure) with a completely different goal in mind. Still, I can tell you that the majority of the audience I saw this with seemed pretty annoyed by the film’s tone, which isn’t really a fair film criticism, as much as a practical reality.

Having said that, there are a whole lot of actual flaws here that bring the movie down a few pegs. First and foremost, while I like that the film ambitiously attempts to tackle big ideas, the undertaking is undercooked, with plenty of unanswered questions, poorly developed characters, plot holes and confusing character motivations that make the film nonsensical (and even borderline incoherent) at times. I don’t really feel like listing them all to prove a point, but this video here does a pretty good job highlighting most of them, so if you’re interested, check it out.

Then, of course, there’s the whole approach the film takes in mostly being one long set up for a potential sequel. I’m not totally against that on occasion, but generally, that type of approach compromises a film. When it’s a franchise with an individual episode that mostly stands on its own, that’s ok, but when it’s this type of mindbender, it feels like a cheat.

Despite all of these problems, the film deserves major plaudits for its transcendent visuals. Prometheus marks the third film to use 3D in which I actually enjoyed the technology and thought it added to the experience (the first two being Hugo and Avatar).* The ability for the camera to exploit depth and spatial nuance here is striking and so realistic that at one point I got annoyed that a woman’s head was blocking my view until I realized that was actually Charlize Thernon, obstructing the camera’s view of the video feed she was watching as her character Mereditch Vickers.

*Is it just me, or is it odd that the two filmmakers to fully utilize and take advantage of the 3D advancements made in the post Avatar world are 69-year-old Martin Scorsese and 74-year-old Ridley Scott? Isn’t this the type of thing one would expect younger, less established directors to embrace (ala when George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, and Cameron himself were leading the charge on special effects advancements throughout their 30s and 40s)?  Instead it’s the old hands who are pushing the new medium, and I guess that’s not about to change, as the 58-year-old Ang Lee (same age as James Cameron) seems destined to join the group with Life of Pi.

In the end, the movie features too many positives – the sublime Fassbender, that abortion scene, and some Oscar-worthy visuals – to totally disregard. Prometheus is somewhat of a failure, but it’s a noble and interesting one that can really stir a lot of rousing debate, and that earns it a certain level of respect in my book. B-