Thursday, November 7, 2013
Monsters University (2013)
Cast:
Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Helen Mirren
Director: Dan Scanlon
Synopsis: Monsters University is
a computer-animated film produced by Disney and Pixar that the whole family can
enjoy. It is a fun-filled film directed by Dan Scanlon and produced by Kori Rae
that will take a family through the fun, exciting, and challenging adventures
of famous characters “Mike” and “Sully’s” college life. Mike, who is smart,
knows all the basics of scaring, and is good with “school” is ready to take on
the scare program at Monsters University, while Sully is ready to take on the
scare program a little differently. He is confident, scary, and good at
“scaring” children, but doesn’t know too much about the “books.” Both Mike and
Sully face hard challenges in the scare program and are forced to prove their
abilities through the scare games with the help of their new fraternity team
Oozma Kappa. Together through the challenges of the scare games, they learn
that working together and putting their own unique abilities together can help
accomplish more than they ever dreamed. Mike and Sully realize that they work
best together.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4/5 Reels
Review:
Monsters University (2013) is a “prequel” to Monsters Inc. (2001). It is a fun-filled
movie about the monsters-Mike-played by Billy Crystal, and Sully’s-played by
John Goodman, past. It shows a heartfelt story of how Mike and Sully began as a
team, and other characters as well-including Randal who is a mean monster in
Monsters Inc. but was first Mike’s roommate and friend. Monsters University is a fun movie that takes you into the Monsters
World again, but this time into the past before Mike and Sully were ever
scarers.
Both Billy
Crystal and John Goodman did a great job at portraying the characters of Mike
and Sully. Steve Buscemi, Helen Mirren, and all the other actors did a great
job as well. The actors portrayed college students very well with a lot of humor.
The animators did an outstanding job at portraying an actual university and
were very creative by adding college clubs, dorm life, and college events into
the movie! The story line is accomplished very well and flows throughout the
movie with a lot of added comedy that the whole family will enjoy. The fun
fraternity Mike and Sully are apart of, called “Oozma Kappa,” adds a lot of fun
humor into the movie as well. We meet fun characters through this fraternity
who also go along the journey of becoming scarers.
Monsters University goes into the past college experiences of
the same fun-filled characters we see in Monsters
Inc. This time, we see “how it all started.” Mike Wazowski has always
dreamed of going to Monsters University and works very hard to get there. We
see him in his past as a little monster being inspired to one day go to
Monsters University as a “scare student,” which he ends up fulfilling. Sully is
a “Sullivan” and has come to Monsters University bearing his family’s name. His
dad is a famous scare student among the school and everything seems to be easy
for him leading up into entering Monsters University.
Both Mike
and Sully start immediately into the scare program and have one semester to
fully prepare for their final exam that includes scaring a fake child in a
screen-simulator. This will determine if they will continue in the scare
program or not. Mike studies hard, while Sully plays hard. Mike isn’t exactly
the scariest monster around, while Sully scares everyone in class the first day
of school. Final Exam day arrives and both Mike and Sully have been competing
with each other the whole semester. Their competition gets out of hand on exam
day, causing an accident to happen that gets the head of the program-Hardscrabble,
very upset. Hardscrabble decides to test Mike and Sully right then and there
after the accident-not giving Mike the proper chance of showing all that he
worked hard for by giving him a proper exam. Sully goes first and because he
didn’t study, he only knows one way to scare. He responds to the question with
his one roar and fails because it wasn’t the proper way to respond to the
question. He fails out of the program. Mike is next and before he is given a
chance to finish his roar, Hardscrabble fails him, tells him he is not scary
and never will be, and takes him out of the program.
Both Mike
and Sully are upset at the exam and each other. Mike feels mistreated because
of his size and wants to prove to the whole scare program that he is scary! He
decides to join the scare games with a not so scary fraternity group called
Oozma Kappa who is the only fraternity that is willing to work with Mike
because they are nice, non-scary monsters. Sully ends up joining the team as
well after Mike makes a deal with Hardscrabble that says “if he wins the scare
games, she must allow everyone in his group into the scare program, and if he
loses, he will leave Monsters University.”
Through
Mike’s training, the Oozma Kappa team works hard to train for the scare games.
Mike and Sully clash because Sully doesn’t work hard like the rest of Oozma
Kappa because he doesn’t respect non-scary monsters. To encourage his team,
after being ridiculed by the whole university for being in the scare games and
not being scary, Mike takes his team to Monsters Inc. for a little field trip.
When they all look inside Monsters Inc., they find all sorts of different
monsters-just like them. They all don’t look the same. Some are small, some are
big, some are young, and some are old. Oozma Kappa starts to believe in
themselves, Sully becomes humbled, and both Mike and Sully apologize to each
other, which starts the beginning of a life-long friendship. At this point, the
whole team works together and surprises everyone by becoming one of the last
two teams in the scare games.
The final
round comes and this round consists of the fake child in the screen-simulator, just
like the final exam in the scare program. Sully becomes nervous for Mike and
tries to help him become scarier the night before. The game begins and everyone
is doing great in Oozma Kappa, and Mike is given the last turn on their team.
Surprisingly, he has the highest scare results and the Oozma Kappa team wins!
After the game, Mike is thrilled and goes back to the screen-simulator to
reflect on what happened in the game, but sadly finds a trigger that has his
settings on the screen-simulator set to “easy,” while everyone else had
settings of “hard.” This shows Mike that Sully cheated for him so Mike wouldn’t
embarrass himself or the team. Mike is outraged and decides to show himself and
everyone else that he is scary by going through a forbidden area-a real child’s
door, so he can scare a child. When he enters the child’s room, he tries to
scare the child, but fails to do so, causing her to laugh instead. Little did
Mike know that he entered a cabin full of little girls. Sully comes to save
Mike from the children and when he finds him, Mike is sad and feels
discouraged. Sully confesses that even though he is “scary,” he is always
“terrified” inside. Sully encourages Mike and tells him that he is a great
monster and just needs to be himself and mike encourages Sully and tells him
the same thing. When they return to the door to come back to Monsters
University, they find that the door has been shut off and they can’t return
home. This causes Mike and Sully to come up with a plan to scare everyone in
the cabin so much that they could cause enough scream to power up the door once
again, which they end up doing by using Mike’s brains and Sully’s scare talent.
They start acting as a team and find out that together, they can be better.
They end up producing enough scream and enter the University, surprising Hardscrabble.
Both Mike
and Sully are expelled for what happened, but the head of the scare program
respects both Mike and Sully and wishes them the best. Mike and Sully don’t quit
giving up their dream of being a scarer and decide to start working in the Mail
room at Monsters Inc. to maybe one day work up into becoming “scarers.” Together, they are invincible.
Monsters University is a well-produced movie that the whole
family will enjoy. The movie has a great moral story of being yourself and not
letting what people say affect what you do. I highly recommend this movie.
By Tori Caplinger
Monster's University was definitely family friendly - a comedy that many people (children and adults) will enjoy. I was only a little disappointed at the story line. I had hoped the story would center around the relationship between Mike and Sully, but the story seems to be all about MIke and him proving himself to the community. However, I agree that it is entertaining and a lot of fun. I liked how you brought out the moral of the story too - a moral that is always applicable to every generation.
ReplyDeleteMonsters University was a great movie to watch with family or friends. This movie reminded me that nothing is impossible if you try hard. For example, at the beginning, no one in Monsters University thought that Mike was a scarer and believed that he would never become a scarer. However, Mike did not give up. He worked more hard than others because he believed that he would becoming a scarer monster. This example also related to what you said that "being yourself and no letting what people say affect what you do."
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