MONSTERS UNIVERSITY review by Dorkman (mild spoilers)

When Pixar announced plans to create a sequel to MONSTERS, INC., I was something close to livid. MONSTERS, INC. remains my favorite Pixar movie, with a perfect ending that always — always — chokes me up. To try to follow up on such a perfect moment would be the most boneheaded move imaginable.

It seems better senses prevailed at Pixar (which sadly doesn’t always happen these days) and MONSTERS, INC. 2 became MONSTERS UNIVERSITY, a prequel detailing how Mike and Sully — bitter rivals upon first meeting — became best friends.

Both a send-up and a celebration of wacky college comedies, MONSTERS UNIVERSITY may not be a superior (or necessary) follow-up to the previous film, but it is at least a worthy addition to the Monsters, Inc. mythology.

Like most prequels, it is meant to be viewed after it’s predecessor rather than according to story-chronology, relying as it does on a familiarity with how this story universe operates, as well as the characters’ ultimate destinies. The interest in a well-done prequel story comes not from the question “what will happen to these characters,” but “how do these characters become the characters we know and love?” The further afield from their destination the story can take them, the bigger the challenge — and the more satisfying it is — when they overcome these obstacles and finally arrive on the clear path to their later life.

A lot of prequels don’t seem to get this. MONSTERS UNIVERSITY gets it. It doesn’t make itself a pale shadow of the original by trying to tell the same jokes again, it’s not another adventure with a toddler that somehow everyone forgot about by the time of MONSTERS, INC. Certainly there are nods to the original –characters say things which become ironic viewed in the light of later events — and a few retcons must be accepted, but the film has a story of its own to tell, and tells it without slavish fanservice.

MONSTERS UNIVERSITY also avoids the pitfall of inadvertently making the universe smaller in its attempts to expand it. A lesser prequel would have all the same characters as MONSTERS, INC., only younger, as though only a handful of characters exist in this entire story universe and may only interact with each other. Aside from Mike, Sully, Randall and one or two quick walk-on cameos, MONSTERS UNIVERSITY boasts a collection of entirely new characters. In particular, the pledges of Oozma Kappa — the underdog (read: “loser”) frat house Mike and Sully must grudgingly join for plot reasons which are well-justified but too complicated to bother describing here — are entertaining, charming, and fully-realized, each with a character journey of his own. The humor is sharp and layered, with enough silliness to keep young kids engaged and enough wit to entertain adults.

But I’m honestly most impressed with the story. It follows the typical 80s college underdog plot formula, but then it does something interesting. Just when that movie should be coming to an end, there’s a small but important twist on the formula — and the movie keeps going. Not in a BRAVE “wait, what the hell is going on” sense, but in an “ending there would be a cop-out, the characters have a little further to travel,” story-motivated sense. What a jaded moviegoer like me expected to be the climax turns out to be the break into the third act. Suddenly I had no idea what was going to happen.

And it was wonderful. The real story — the character story — gets to shine and transcend the predictable plot structure of the previous two acts with an unexpected but perfect finale, leading to an ending that is equally surprising, in that the characters’ success is not total. They triumph against their internal struggles, but not against the external — like the ending to ROCKY. Bold for any movie these days, doubly so for family fare. Rather than a pat “everything worked out” ending, dovetailing neatly into their lives as Monsters, Inc. scarers, they are merely set at the last on the long road of hard work and dedication in that direction.

As I said at the top, MONSTERS, INC. didn’t “need” a follow-up. But MONSTERS UNIVERSITY was a story worth telling, one which has a fitting place within the MONSTERS universe. I’m glad they made it, glad to have seen it, and I’ll be glad to have the Blu-ray on my shelf alongside the original.