Monsters, Inc.

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Monsters, Inc.

Pub: Disney/Pixar D610688 PALVHS. 88 minutes
featuring the voices of John Goodman and Billy Crystal.

Check out website: www.disney.co.uk/disneyvideos

With the High Street promotion, merchandise and other advertising, it would be impossible for you to have ignored seeing the key monsters, Sulley and Mike, somewhere in your preambles through your town or city shopping centres.

This is a computer-animated film depicting the lives of the creatures of Monstropolis who need to collect the screams of human children to power up their city.

Monsters, Inc. They have the technology to open literal doorways into any child's bedrooms to carry out these deeds. Sulley - the big blue one with purple spots and a tail - has the highest score for number of screams.

The more villainous chameleon-skinned Randall wants to topple Sulley and have this acclaim. All this is blended into another plot which is wiser not to disclose without giving away the ending.

The added complication here is when a little girl called Boo gets through an open doorway and isn't scared of Sulley and he can't get her home. To the monsters, human contamination is the worse stigmata and neither Sulley or Mike, his green-eye assistant, want to damage their reputations.

My Mother's reaction after the first few minutes was, 'Is this for kids? There's monsters in it' and didn't want to watch any more, leaving it to me for a late night viewing.
In many ways, I felt the monsters were too cuddly and wholesome than something to be scared of.

Until you look close up, I doubt if you'd spot Sulley had purple spots, the contrast between them and his electric blue fur is hardly sharp enough. Saying that, this is also one of the first computer-animated films to create hair that moves like hair so things might not have gone as expected once they got going.

There are a lot of interesting sight gags and several chases but then the target audience is more kids than adults. If you're into animation, then you're going to love this aspect, not to mention the accompanying three film shorts on the video (even if it isn't particularly apparent without reading the box that one of them is a preview for Pixar's next film).

If you want your kids glued to the box to give you time to do other things then this will also suit you.

Where next for Pixar to develop? I'd love to see them produce more realistic humans to show they can do it.

GF Willmetts

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