BEFORE: Billy Crystal carries over from "Parental Guidance" and kicks off the back-to-school chain.
AFTER: It's a little too easy to just say, "Well, this is ALMOST as good as the original, Monsters Inc." Even though that may be true, I hate to just give this film a score and leave it at that. I think the story worked well given the constraints that were imposed on it - namely that it had to begin with Mike and Sully entering college as strangers, and leaving college as best friends. There were challenges along the way, but at least the story didn't set up a bunch of roadblocks for itself, the way that "Parental Guidance" did.
This follows the "darkest before the dawn" scenario, with Mike and Sully getting kicked out of the scarer program at Monsters U. fairly early into the picture, and then for different personal reasons, they both need to find a way back. It's similar to regular human college I suppose - if you don't have the skills for the pre-med program, you can try pre-law or transferring your credits to another major. Though I'm not quite sure what other career options are available to monsters - the film mentions scream-canister design, but surely there must be others, right?
The two stars of the film form a sort of "Odd Couple", not just in appearance but also in personalities at the start of the story, with one enterprising and studious and the other lackadaisical and willing to coast on his family's reputation. Yes, there are legacy students, even at Monsters University. They're forced to work together to get back into the program, via the university's "Scare Games".
The main problem at this point is that the fraternity vs. fraternity set-up resembles "Revenge of the Nerds" a bit too closely. Mike and Sully fall in with the "loser" fraternity, Oozma Kappa, which might as well be called Lambda Lambda Lambda to drive the point home. But this is where the film got kind of good again, because the team of misfits had to find innovative ways to win each challenge in the Scare Games, or at least hope that another team did worse, or got disqualified for some reason.
The message for the kids is not just the traditional "follow your dream" sentimental nonsense - it's at least quantified as "follow your dream, but if it doesn't work out the way you want, you might have to alter your dream a bit and give it another go". Sure, that's a bit wordy, but so much more realistic. I was writing just yesterday about how I entered film school with plans to be a director, and I soon learned that I just didn't feel confident enough about my own storytelling to follow through with that. OK, I changed the dream just a little bit and set out to be a producer. Life is a constant process of having goals, and then either reaching them and setting new ones, or not reaching them and re-adjusting your plans.
Also starring the voices of John Goodman (last seen in "Sweet Dreams"), Steve Buscemi (last seen in "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone"), Helen Mirren (last seen in "Hitchcock"), Joel Murray, Sean Hayes (last seen in "The Cat and the Hat"), Dave Foley (last seen in "Dick"), Charlie Day (last seen in "Pacific Rim"), Alfred Molina (last heard in "Rango"), Nathan Fillion (last seen in "Super"), Tyler Labine, Aubrey Plaza (last seen in "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World"), Bobby Moynihan, Bonnie Hunt (last heard in "Cars 2"), with cameos from John Krasinski (last seen in "The Muppets"), Bill Hader (last seen in "Men in Black 3"), John Ratzenberger (last heard in "Brave").
RATING: 7 out of 10 mugs of cocoa
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