Mike and Sulley Meet in Monsters University

The folks at Pixar are known for crafting films that tell wonderful stories full of humor and heart. Rarely has the mix been better than in Monsters, Inc., the 2001 movie set in a world in which monsters power their city by collecting the screams of children in our world. These monsters, while wildly diverse in physical traits, are largely average Joes, particularly the huge, blue-haired James Sullivan (John Goodman) and the short, one-eyed Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal). An unusually close encounter with a toddler challenges their world-view and ultimately deepens their friendship, with far-reaching consequences for their society at large.

While I did not expect Monsters University to have the emotional and spiritual depth of the film that preceded it, I was excited to hear that more than a decade after they first appeared, these unconventional buddies would be gracing the big screen again, this time in a prequel. From a purely visual standpoint, I knew it would be great fun, since this particular world offers so many opportunities to exercise artistic creativity. I also relished the thought of seeing these fantastic friends in action again. While I don’t think this will attain the classic status that Toy Story 2 has, I found it a very enjoyable return to familiar territory.

While I would consider Sulley the slightly more main character in Monsters, Inc., Mike moves into greater prominence here. In fact, the movie begins with him as an adorable youngster rejected by his classmates for his small size, braces and overall nerdiness. A trip to the scare factory gives him a sense of direction, and his arrival at Monsters University is the result of intensive study. His passion for the material knows no bounds, but can this rather goofy fellow actually be scary? How will he stand a chance against the raw talent of someone like fellow freshman James Sullivan, a true jock among monsters?

In many ways, this is a typical college comedy about a nerd and a popular person learning from each other. Many of the jokes borrow from other films in that genre, but the creators put a fun Pixar spin on them that makes the movie great fun to watch. As in the first movie, the monsters display all sorts of creative characteristics, and here, the emphasis is on teamwork – finding ways to make those traits come together in productive ways. This is best demonstrated in the members of Oozma Kappa, the uber-dorky fraternity of misfits that Mike and Sulley join so they can enter a campus-wide contest to prove to the austere university headmistress, a dragon voiced by Helen Mirren, that they deserve to be students there.

At first, Mike and Sulley are rivals too blinded by their own pride to form a useful partnership, while their teammates are merely ineffective and lacking in proper leadership. Eventually, however, they learn to develop their strengths and use them to everyone’s benefit. Two-headed Terri and Terry and super-flexible Art are fun, but particularly prominent are the beautifully bland Squishy, his sweetly overbearing mother (in whose home the fraternity is housed) and Don, the fraternity’s middle-aged founder. Together, they make a lovable bunch of underdogs.

While there’s at least one line in the original movie that seems to clash with the storyline presented here, the film generally does a good job of meshing believably with Monsters, Inc., and the nods to that movie are fun, particularly running jokes like Mike’s tendency to get obscured in photographs. Not only do we see the evolution of Mike and Sulley’s friendship, but of their rivalry with Randall (Steve Buscemi), the sneaky chameleon-like lizard who causes them no end of trouble at the factory. His progression is an interesting study in the dark side of desiring popularity.

While neither the movie nor the charming short involving a blue umbrella’s quest to find happiness are the most memorable of Pixar’s efforts, they are thoroughly enjoyable, and the visual spectacle of the film is more pronounced than ever. The backdrops are particularly impressive. While many of the jokes seem to aim more at an adult audience as they draw on previous films, there’s nothing objectionable for parents to worry about, and there’s plenty of slapstick to keep the youngest kids entertained. A tribute to friendship and the value of hard work and overcoming prejudices, Monsters University is a fun and colorful summer flick.

The Large Cast of The Laramie Project Conveys the Complexities of a Stricken Town

One of the nice side benefits to being a LOST fan is that it has led me to several movies by way of its cast. With a couple dozen actors starring and another hundred or so in memorable supporting roles, that opens up a lot of possibilities. In the case of The Laramie Project, I’d run across it on the IMDb page of Nestor Carbonell and Jeremy Davies, which piqued my interest enough to click on its own page and discover that it also features Clancy Brown and Michael Emerson. Not since In Bruges have I seen so many actors from the same series (in that case, Harry Potter) in another project.

Of course, this is a movie with a huge cast. In essence, it’s a documentary, with actors standing in for the citizens of Laramie, Wyoming and the team of people who came to interview them in the wake of the brutal murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard. Writer-director Moises Kaufman headed a group of interviewers who spoke to more than 200 people over the course of a year, gathering residents’ impressions of the trial as it unfolded as well as their memories of Matthew and of Aaron McKinney (Mark Webber) and Russell Henderson (Garrett Neergaard), the young men responsible for his death.

The film, like the acclaimed play that preceded it, distills hundreds of hours of interviews into a couple of hours. On stage, there are only eight actors, each playing multiple roles, but in the movie, each character is portrayed by a different actor. From the many voices represented, some particularly memorable characters emerge, demonstrating the range of reactions to this tragic event. The vast majority of citizens are distressed by the violence. Some classify it as a hate crime, while others can’t understand why there is so much focus on Matthew’s orientation. Several clearly are tired of their town being in the midst of a media frenzy, while others hope that Moises and his team will help to demonstrate that most townspeople are not like the murderers.

Initially, I was most attentive to the actors that drew me to the movie in the first place. That alone gave me plenty to watch, as Carbonell, portraying Moises, is probably on-screen for more than half the movie. Here, he demonstrates the same sort of level-headedness and good listening skills that make Richard Alpert such an effective advisor on LOST. Jeremy Davies, portraying theatre major Jedadiah Schulz, has quite a bit of screen time too. Like Daniel Faraday, he’s sweet-natured, soft-spoken almost to the point of inarticulateness and perpetually nervous, due in part to his fear of going against the wishes of his strong-willed parents. Perhaps better than any other character, he exemplifies the struggle to reconcile compassion with seemingly conflicting religious beliefs. Davies and Carbonell appear together in several scenes, which is neat to see as they interact so memorably in two of LOST‘s most game-changing episodes.

Clancy Brown, like Kelvin Inman, has a no-nonsense air about him as detective Rob Debree, who plays a major part in the trials that follow, while Michael Emerson, so often chilling as Ben Linus, manages to cause uneasiness in two brief scenes as a pastor of a local church. I was disappointed in how limited his role was, since Emerson is always so fascinating to watch and since it was hard to really get the measure of his character in such a short time, but as he evidently refused to participate in any sort of extended interview, I suppose that couldn’t be avoided. I’m a little surprised Moises bothered to include him, but I’m guessing he wanted to show that not all the clergy in town were as accepting of Matthew’s open homosexuality as Father Roger Schmit (Tom Bower), the feisty Catholic priest who becomes a major voice against hate crimes. While Emerson’s unnamed reverend condemns the violence, the steely manner in which he conveys his hope that Matthew repented of his lifestyle before slipping into a coma also carries hints of condemnation - though nothing near as virulent as the toxic words of Fred Phelps (James Murtaugh), who, along with other members of his Westboro Baptist Church, pickets Matthew’s funeral and the subsequent trials.

That spiteful demonstration inspires a counter-protest led by Romaine Patterson (Christina Ricci), a spirited young woman whose friendship with Matthew helped spark her own activism. Sympathetic store owner Trish Steger (Margo Martindale) and warm-hearted drama teacher Rebecca Hillicker (Camryn Manheim) are among the most troubled that something like this could happen in their town. One of the most riveting characters is Reggie Fluty (Amy Madigan), the dedicated police officer who first arrives on the scene and later finds out that her close contact with the bleeding Matthew exposed her to his HIV, as she had open sores on her hands at the time. Also intriguing is Steve Buscemi’s crusty but wise Doc O’Conner, who sometimes chauffered Matthew into Colorado, and Matt Galloway (Joshua Jackson), the guilt-ridden bartender who was working the night Aaron and Russell accosted Matthew. Meanwhile, the trial shows us the pain of Matthew’s parents, especially his eloquent father (Terry Kinney), as well as the families of the killers, who are unable to understand how the boys they love so much could do such a thing.

The Laramie Project is a sad movie, but there’s also something inspirational in the way that so many of the residents come together to try to make sense of this tragic event. In one of the film’s most striking scenes, a small group of friends and supporters march at the end of the Homecoming Parade in honor of Matthew, who at this point in the film is still clinging to life in a hospital. The parade circles around the block, and by the time it’s over hundreds of people have joined those bringing up the rear. It’s a visual representation of the town’s reaction to the attack, and though there are still some residents who don’t quite understand what all the fuss is about, like Laura Linney’s Sherry Johnson, the grief seems largely communal.

Moises Kaufman and his crew recently returned to Laramie to conduct more interviews for a play entitled The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later; I don’t know if there are any plans to adapt that into a film as well, but I would be interested to see how the town has changed in the years since. A fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking film, The Laramie Project paints a complex portrait of a town coming to grips with a horrific crime and the prejudices that contributed to it.

I Wish I Had a Monster in My Closet!

I have yet to see Chicken Little. I’m not sure it’s going to happen, at least in the theater; I suspect it would not be an appropriate use of a trip to the big screen. Quite frankly, Disney’s latest computer animated effort looks scary, in more ways than one. It’s left me longing for the most endearing of the Disney-Pixar collaborations, most especially Monsters, Inc. How can a movie about monsters be so adorable? Why hasn’t any Disney flick since achieved that level of brilliance? (Actually, Finding Nemo came close, but no others have.)

I know Epinions needs another review of Monsters, Inc. like an ostrich needs a swimming pool, but I couldn’t resist. The premise is very clever. While the Toy Story movies imagined the everyday activities of toys while their owners aren’t looking, allowing for all sorts of creative possibilities, Monsters, Inc. subverts the old idea of the monster in the closet by showing us a world in which the monsters are just ordinary folks who provide electricity for their town by collecting the energy given off by the screams of children. The bulk of the film takes place in the titular factory, which contains a dizzying array of doors – one for every child’s room in the world. (Toward the end of the movie, we actually get to see the inner workings of the factory in a scene that reminded me both of Star Wars and The Emperor’s New Groove.) The monsters take their job of scaring the children seriously but are in fact terrified of the kiddies, as evidenced by the hilariously omnipresent task force responsible for decontaminating areas that have been touched by anything from the human world.

The variety of life in Monstropolis provides a feast for the eyes. The animators must’ve had a lot of fun with this one. Each character is distinctively freakish, with multiple eyes or limbs, fur or scales, snakes for hair or the plump body of a slug to shimmy along the floor. And yet very few of these characters seem sinister at all – the exception being Randall (Steve Buscemi), the sneaky chameleon-like rival of the film’s heroes, buddies with the incredibly working-class names James Sullivan (John Goodman) and Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal). Sulley is a warm and fuzzy gentle giant, the steady, dependable top scarer at his company who finds himself inexplicably becoming attached to the child who mysteriously turns up in Monstropolis. Short, squat, one-eyed Mike has all the frantic energy of Donkey in Shrek. He’s sarcastic and neurotic and can’t seem to stop talking. The two make a great team, playing off one another perfectly as they strive to return the little girl Sully dubs “Boo” (Mary Gibbs) to her rightful bedroom before anyone finds out what they’re up to. Pixar still hadn’t quite perfected its portrayal of humanity yet at this point; she’s a cutie, but she seems far less realistic and vibrant than her monster counterparts. Nonetheless, she’s adorable, and the relationship that develops between her and Sulley becomes the heart of the film. Meanwhile, her antics ring amusingly true for anyone who has ever had to babysit a toddler.

Though Mike and Sulley get the most attention, there are a number of monsters to whom we are introduced. There’s Roz (Bob Peterson), the slug-like, grating secretary always after Mike to complete his paperwork, and Celia (Jennifer Tilly), his easily offended girlfriend whose snake-filled hair rattles when she’s angry. There’s the apparently paternal boss, Henry J. Waternoose III (James Coburn); the nerdy and servile Fungus (Frank Oz); the obligatory John Ratzenberger character (the gregarious Yeti) and plenty of other amusing characters. While the inclusion of Boo and the rampant slapstick are appealing to the youngest crowd, there are plenty of jokes and references especially for adults. The absolute silliness of the child contamination task force allowed an opportunity to laugh a bit at the anthrax scare that had the country in its icy grip when the movie came out. Monstropolis’ energy crisis also hits close to home; if only the solution for us were as simple as the one Sulley hits upon!

Monsters, Inc. is hilarious and heart-warming, one of the best animated movies I’ve ever seen. Let’s hope there are still a couple more where that came from.