Monsters University

2013 prequel

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: 18/20; Emma: 17/20; Abbey: 17/20; Buster: 19/20)

Plot: Awkward and definitely non-scary Mike, since a field trip to Monsters, Inc. as a little fellow, has always dreamed of being a scarer. Sully's the son of a former all-star scarer. They meet in college and with the former working as hard as he can to make up for a lack of natural talent while the latter gets by solely on his, they don't initially get along. In fact, their disagreement escalates to the point where an accident gets them thrown out of the scaring program. They have to join a fraternity of oddballs in order to enter a scaring contest and get back in the program. Then, the whole movie sort of borrows the plot of Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise only without Curtis Armstrong.

Look at all those potential toys on the movie poster up there! At least they're almost all new faces. With the exception of the two main monsters and Randall, Pixar fought the urge to force a bunch of characters from the first movie into this thing. A lot of them make appearances, but they're on the periphery or maybe the periphery of the periphery. Waternoose, for example, is only seen briefly in a picture, and the details changed about him were funny. Roz and Ratzenberger's Abominable Snowman might be a little forced, but they not in the thing long enough to be any more than a gag. I went into this experience with low expectations. I wasn't thrilled about a sequel (well, prequel) to Monsters, Inc. anyway, and after the abysmal Cars 2 and the mediocre Brave, I just didn't have high hopes for this one even though the possibilities in this Monsters world really do seem endless, a well that I'm sure the Disney people wouldn't mind dipping into again and again with a television series or a bunch of sequels. This isn't upper-echelon Pixar exactly, but it looks like they're heading in the right direction. For me, a prequel should really deepen your understanding of the characters, allow the characters that you already feel like you know and love to develop and grow. This story does that with Sully and Mike very well, and it makes the friendship we see in the first movie something a little more special. Randall's developed as well, albeit more generically, and Buscemi does a great job taking a little edge off the voice since his character is way less confident and malicious and a lot, well, dorkier. Goodman and Crystal are good, too, and so is Helen Mirren as a new character--the sort-of villainous Dead Hardscrabble. Love how that character moves, and the sound effect added to her walking. The animation is a lot better than what we saw in the first movie, especially with the backgrounds and setting details. The first movie pretty much takes place in one setting, and it looks plastic at times and after a while is a little redundant. The ancient buildings and the foliage on the Monsters University campus allow for a lot more texture variety. There's almost nothing spectacular about the setting details in that first movie. Here, the backgrounds are really lovely, the Pixar people building on the photo-realistic details we're getting in CGI cartoons these days. The story itself won't blow away anybody who has seen any number of underdog stories on film, but there was a nifty unexpected twist at the end and the morals of the story--stuff about friendship and teamwork--are great and, like the best Pixar stuff, filled with heart. The new characters are mostly welcome additions, and some of them are really funny. The movie's a lot of fun, at least when you're watching it for a first time, and there are a couple scenes that are even exciting without being as goofy (or as long) as that door sequence from the first movie. A dramatic scene near the end of the movie is very well done. Oh, and there's one shot of Mike and Sully sitting beside a lake under a full moon that people will want made into a poster. Beautiful.

Here's my updated list of my favorite Pixar movies, something that I could more than likely change depending on my mood:

1) Toy Story (bonus for being the first/sentimental reasons)
2) Up
3) Finding Nemo
4) Ratatouille
5) Toy Story 3
6) The Incredibles
7) Wall-E
8) A Bug's Life 
9) Monsters, Inc.
10) Monsters University
11) Cars
12) Toy Story 2
13) Brave
14) Cars 2

I'm not really confident in that ranking. 1-6 could all shuffle a bit. 7-12 could shuffle. I'm really unsure where to put Wall-E. I'm confident that 13 and 14 are in the right place though. Regardless, it's still a remarkable resume from the Pixar people.

Oh, the short, a cutesy love story about umbrellas. It wasn't bad. I watched most of it thinking that it was really lazy. "This is just live action with some animated faces on the umbrellas," I thought. I'm still having trouble believing that it was all animated. They're just showing off. The story for this one was the sort of thing you'd see in a silent comedy, only with inanimate objects.

Brave

2012 Pixar princess movie

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 16/20; Dylan: 11/20; Emma: 13/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Merida is a Scottish princess who, according to custom, has to be married off to a dude from one of the other three clans. She doesn't want that at all, probably because, like Entertainment Weekly has suggested, she's gay. She defies her parents and then runs into a witch who helps her in about the same way the monkey's paw helped the people in the short story "The Monkey's Paw". Oh, snap! See where free-thinking gets you, girls?

This isn't upper-echelon Pixar, but it does further prove their genius. I mean, who else is going to see Carrot Top and think, "Yep! There's the next Disney princess!"? I like Merida and she's voiced well by Kelly Macdonald who really pulls off a nice fake Scottish accent here. But with free-thinking gal Mulan and, to a lesser extent, Rapunzel, she doesn't feel all that fresh. The animation for Merida's hair is almost worth the price of admission alone. OK, I don't know why I typed that because it's not true. Movies are fucking expensive. The animation, with the exception of some of the humans who look a little rubbery compared to the settings, is top notch. They've taken the realism gauntlet thrown down by How to Train Your Dragon and nailed it. Their Scotland, kind of a storybook Scotland, is lovely, and the forest setting and castle interiors have an astonishing amount of detail and texture. I like how that horse looked, too. And I like that Pixar has created their own fairy tale here. That's not a bad direction for them to take. It really is a good movie, but it just never grabbed me, doesn't have that special bit of whatever that makes other Pixar features so magical. It feels on the surface like an original, but it's really made up of parts from the same store that other contemporary storytellers frequent. So it succeeds in being just like a whole bunch of other princess movies. There was a surprising lack of humor. The three red-haired demon twins thrown into the proceedings for little more than comic effect did very little for me. The witch was probably the funniest character, but she didn't exactly seem original--part Edna Mole/part Mama Odie maybe. The bulk of this has a too-serious tone, and the bears were too scary. And speaking of bears, isn't Disney having characters turn into bears a little too soon after Brother Bear? Plus, there's all this magic and floating blue fuzzy things which, for whatever reason, made me think of Disney's Atlantis even though there weren't any blue fuzzy things to be seen in that movie. Still, that's never a good thing. And all the magic is bound to irritate Christians. Of course, Christians are already going to be pissed when they take their little girls to see this only to have them see a gigantic lesbian on the screen which, of course, is going to turn them into little gay kids themselves. It was good hearing Craig Ferguson, one of my favorite people, and it's always nice to hear Billy Connolly, but their appearances were a little obvious. And I completely missed John Ratzenberger although he is in this apparently. I couldn't find the Pizza Planet truck anywhere in medieval Scotland either. Again, this is a very well done original fairy tale; it just didn't have enough personality. And without that, it's sadly the first Pixar movie I've seen in a theater that I'm not really in a hurry to see a second time.

For the record: As nutty as I am with my theories regarding Pixar movies (ahem, Up),I don't think Merida is gay. I am glad that I got to throw a few lesbians into this write-up though because that will surely attract some Googlers. It's safe for you to click on those links, by the way, because they're just articles written about how Merida might be gay. It won't take you to any not-safe-for-work hot lesbian action or anything.

Cars 2

2011 sequel

Rating: 12/20 (Jen: 14/20; Dylan: 10/20; Emma: 4/20; Abbey: 10/20)

Plot: Lightning McQueen takes a challenge and travels to Europe to race against some cool European cars. While there, his friend becomes an embarrassing distraction, and the tow truck somehow winds up in the middle of this dangerous spy adventure.

The first Cars movie isn't one of Pixar's best, but it at least had some heart. The end gets to me, and the movie's worth seeing to watch the main character grow, to enjoy Paul Newman's performance as a crotchety old race car, and to appreciate the nostalgic little message. This movie has none of those things. It's one comic gag or cartoon slapstick scene after another, and most of the comedy doesn't work, at least for somebody like me who was more annoyed than amused with the character of Mater in the first movie. See, this one's got Mater as the star of the show, and it just doesn't work. It's like making C3PO the main character in a Star Wars movie. I wouldn't even agree that the character works in small doses, but an entire movie of Mater? I didn't ask for that, Pixar! I don't believe he says "Get 'R Done" in this one, something that dropped the first one at least a full point, but he does "Shoo-oot" enough to make me want to gouge my ears out. I kind of enjoyed some of the spy stuff with some action sequences and realistic animation that reminded me a lot of The Incredibles. The background and scenery animation is really great, and I liked a couple visual references to other Pixar movies. I'm also still amazed at Pixar's ability to inject so much personality into these car characters with very subtle facial expressions. But the story was too frenetic and unfocused, the spy stuff ran out of steam, and the comedy never worked for me at all. The movie's as shiny as a bucket of newly-minted quarters, but it just lacks that heart that I've come to expect from a Pixar movie. This is the first from the studio that I really have no desire to see again.

The Incredibles

2004 superhero cartoon

Rating: 16/20 (Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Bob and Helen Incredible, out-of-work superheroes, try to adjust to normal-person life after saving the world's been outlawed. Helen takes care of their three children while Bob works in a cubicle he barely fits into. On the side, Bob secretly meets with his friend Samuel L. Jackson to park and listen to police scanners and catch some motherfucking criminals. One day, he's contacted by a mysterious woman with a job offer involving the travel to an island and destroy a robot ball. Since Bob just lost his job, he eagerly takes the job but soon discovers that he might be in for more than he bargained for.

See, these are the characters the Pixar folk should be working to bring back to the screen. Those cars and those monsters were fine, but there are so many stories that these characters could be used to tell. Not that this is my favorite Pixar movie. It's not. But it is an exciting story, cool in a James Bond sort of way, and animated with a great attention to detail. The island scenery is realistic, and there's a depth to the animation, especially during scenes where the little fast guy is zipping around where it's impossible to see everything regardless of how much you slow things down. In 2004, it didn't seem like the CGI magicians had quite worked out making people or their movements realistic. Watching this on the big screen, I was impressed with the movements of the human characters, not just because of the semi-realism but because they moved, gesticulated, and grimaced with personality. I especially liked flamboyant Buddy (Jason Lee) and sarcastic and smirking Helen (Holly Hunter). There are still some moments where things just don't look quite right. Helen's butt looks weird in some shots (yeah, I looked), but that might be because I don't understand the physics of an elastic posterior. My favorite two characters are a pair of minor characters, both of diminutive stature. I love every hilarious moment Edna Mode's on the screen, and the fact that director Brad Bird actually does her voice is awesome. And the always-wonderful Wallace Shawn voices Bob's boss, a perfect depiction of Napoleon Complex. The narrative's exciting, tossing you around with some twists and turns, and the music is just as incredible as the titular Incredibles. As with all of Pixar's movies (now they really are all on the blog), there's a lot here for both big people and their kiddies to enjoy. Maybe the big people just a little bit more though.

Finding Nemo

2003 Pixar movie

Rating: 18/20 (Jen: 18/20; Sophie: ?/20)

Plot: The entire world finds out that a clownfish is called a clownfish as Marlin, a clownfish who lost his wife and all but one of his babies after a shark attack, takes a watery road trip to Sydney in search of his missing son, Nemo. Along the way, he meets Dory, a blue fish with no short-term memory, and they encounter sharks, bioluminescent fish with gnarled fangs, stinging jellyfish, surf-happy turtles, a giant whale, seagulls, and a dentist. Can they reach Nemo before the little guy is given to a notorious fish killer with braces?

I was so amazed with the animation when this came out. Pixar's always so good with character, and the animation of the ocean critters along with the good voice talent (love Ellen as Dory) makes even the most minor characters in this memorable. This is a good adventure story, a buddies-on-the-road movie, and although it's episodic, it never seems choppy because it alternates between the dual stories of the father's adventures as he tries to find Sydney and the attempts by Nemo and his new aquarium friends to escape the dentist's office. Finding Nemo's got a great story and that typical Pixar heart, and right from the get-go, with a pretty intense shark attack scene, you know you've got a story that isn't just for children. The adventures are exciting, but there's some great comedy as well, including what I think was Pixar's funniest moment until Potato Head was given a tortilla--the scene with the dentist waiting room occupants watching and listening to the great escape. But as I said, it's really the animation that steals the show. There's an artistic realism to the underwater scenes, and it's hard not to be pleased with the splashes of color across the screen. Nearly eight years later, it's still hard to imagine that animation can ever look better than some of the imagery in Finding Nemo. Just compare this one to its under-the-sea contemporary Shark Tale, and you'll see that the Pixar folks were Buzz Lightyears ahead of their competition. And that's even without a Fresh Prince!

Sophie's started watching movies. Well, to be completely accurate, she's started watching parts of movies. She gets the dvd cabinet open and reaches for either this or Monsters, Inc. usually. Actually, she handed me Kill Bill Volume 2 this evening, but Jen told me that wasn't appropriate for a one-year old.

With this, I believe I've got all the Pixar movies on the blog finally. Now I can just wait patiently for Cars 2 to come out!

Toy Story

1995 movie

Rating: 20/20 (Jen: 20/20; Abbey: 19/20)

Plot: Cowboy Woody is Andy's favorite toy. Andy goes everywhere and does everything with Woody--helps him stop antagonistic potato heads with diabolical schemes, throws him around, repeatedly smacks his groin on a stair railing. Woody and the other toys are happy. Until the threatening arrival of a new spaceman toy, Buzz Lightyear. Wait a second. The characters' names are Woody and Buzz? That seems kind of dirty.

Go ahead and try to argue with me that this isn't a 20/20. Go ahead. I dare you, readers. An impressive start to Pixar's reign of delight with terrific "new" animation (Jen and I saw this in the theater without the one child we had; I was mesmerized) and wonderful characters. The Pixar peeps hit a home run right away with a story that has their unique brand of humor and heart and creative spirit and depth. The often funny and exciting and occasionally touching and (surprisingly) human story's aided by a lively score from the ubiquitous Randy Newman. The voice talent, especially stars Tom Hanks and Tim Allen who were not Pixar's first choices, are great, adding real personalities to the characters. This is not my favorite Pixar movie, and when you've watched it over a thousand times (bad parents that we are, we let Dylan watch it over and over again after it came out on video), you notice some flaws, mostly continuity errors. For example, Andy must live in a tower or something because I'm pretty sure he's got windows on every wall in his room at some point in the movie. The "You're flying!" moment still gives me chills almost every time. Movie magic!

Note: If you care to read it, I do have an alternate "Andy is psychotic" reading of the movie. In it, the toys are of course not actually alive, Sid is actually Andy, Andy's mother is chopped up and stuffed in a toy box, and Pizza Planet is the cafeteria at an asylum.

Cars

2006 cartoon

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 17/20; Emma: 13/20; Abbey: 20/20; Sophie: ?/20)

Plot: It all comes down to a final race between three cars with the winner, including a cocky rookie race car named Lightning McQueen, getting the Piston Cup. That's apparently a big deal. On the way, he gets stuck in a dumpy little forgotten town called Radiator Springs where he's forced to repave a road that he destroyed. Can he complete the task in enough time to get to California and the Piston Cup championship? Will his selfish feelings change as he gets to know the locals in Radiator Springs?

For me, it can be summed up in three simple words. More accurately, two words and a part of a word. Two and a half words. The words? "Get 'r done." A lot of the animation, especially the stuff at the tracks, is beautifully done, and I like Lightning as a good dynamic character voiced by Owen Wilson. It's my least favorite Pixar movie, and I wish the Pixar geniuses would tackle an Incredibles 2 instead of following up this or the monster movie.

Now, to be the opposite of randy since not enough people have participated in the poll to help me figure out the appropriate level of randiness, I'll force my children to type something about Cars.

Abbey: Cars the movie is the best movie ever because it has lots of action. I love how Lightning is a race car. When Lightning was in the truck, I liked all of the toys he had. At the end I liked how Lightning saved a racing car. I thought it was really nice when they found Lightning in Radiator Springs. They were all taking pictures.

Emma: A lot of movies are somewhat amazing and the other ones are kinda boring. But there is also a middle. Cars, in my opinion, is one of those in the middle. I like some of the parts like the whole idea of the movie but it was predictable... in some parts. cows are awesome. MOoO

Moo indeed.

Toy Story 3

2010 cartoon

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 17/20; Dylan: 15/20; Emma: 20/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: The mouse is getting behind on his payments to keep Walt Disney's head cryogenically frozen, and after a failed attempt at a bakesale--failed because of pre-sale rumors abounding involving Goofy and perverse activity and cupcakes--they decide it's time to wheel out Woody and Buzz and the other toys and make another Toy Story movie. They struggle to find a plot and eventually decide to just redo the one from Toy Story 2 with a few twists and a whole bunch of new characters because then they can make a lot more money with action figures, etc. "Because kids," the mouse said, "will even want toys based on characters who were only in the movie for a few seconds."

Don't get me wrong though. I loved seeing a brand new Toy Story movie, and this has to be considered one of the most successful and maybe even the best trilogy of all time. Most of the success comes from the audience already knowing and loving all these characters. Parents and their children have seen the other two Toy Stories dozens of times, so you go into this third one with Woody, Buzz, et. al. already feeling like you grew up with these toys or that they're your best friends. If they are your best friends, however, you really should go out and meet some actual people. So there's no wasted time or need for a lengthy exposition, and the previously-developed characters just slide right into the newish story. Newish instead of new, by the way, because there are quite a few parallels between this and its predecessor. The story is a little tidier than number two, and the animation is a lot better than either of the others although the toys thankfully haven't been given any kind of technological upgrade to make them look better than the very first installment of their story. But the human characters look a lot better and move a lot more naturally than in the other movies. The parts of Toy Story 3 with humans (good to see Sid again!) really couldn't have been done when the first movie came out. And the atmosphere and backgrounds are also vastly improved, creating a ton more depth than we had the first time we met these guys. When the characters are in peril in this movie, like in a genuinely frightening and intense scene where they are about to die, the background textures add to the mood. Compare that with the most frightening scene in Toy Story when Woody and Buzz are trapped in Sid's scary room, and the atmospheres in this new one blow the old stuff away. There were a lot of allusions to the first two movies, including a lot of repeated lines which sort of annoyed me, and there was also a continuation of the references to the original Star Wars trilogy. I also appreciated the references to prison escape movies with the toys' busting out of a daycare center. There was also something going on in that scene that I couldn't stop laughing at, so much that I really started feeling like a fool after a while. There are a ton of funny moments in this, but there are some pop culture references that seemed a little too easy, and I got to the point where I'd cringe whenever Barbie and Ken were on the screen. With over three hundred characters, including a nod to the wonderful My Neighbor Totoro, the screen is just filled with stuff to look at. It's a feast for the eyes. As a parent, this was a strangely emotional experience for me, but a lot of the tears seemed a little more forced in this one than in other Pixar features like Up. Very good movie, and like most Pixar movies, I look forward to seeing it again.

A Bug's Life

1998 Seven Samurai remake

Rating: 16/20 (Abbey: 19/20)

Plot: Mean grasshoppers threaten a colony of ants after clumsy Flik dumps the food they collected to keep the bullies happy. The lead grasshopper, the cleverly-named Hopper, doubles the order and gives the ants until the last leaf falls to collect. Flik is sent away to find some warrior bugs, but he brings back circus bugs instead. Together, they come up with a plan to rid themselves of their grasshopper enemies.

I love the nod to Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven here although if you count the inarticulate Tuck and Roll, you've actually got nine bugs that come to help the ants. This movie has a little trouble getting started since few of the ants really have any character. The exception would be the protagonist voiced by Kid in the Hall Dave Foley, but even Flik has to grow on you a little bit. Once Flik gets to the big city, the story, as well as the animation and the action, picks up. The circus bugs and P.T. Flea (The Empire Strikes Back's John Ratzenberger, Pixar regular) give the film funk and flavor, and as soon as they're introduced, the puns, some of them very bad, start flying so rapidly that you'll wish you had a fly swatter. There are three terrific action sequences in this although the climactic battle scene that takes place at night might be a little too intense. A Bug's Life is a funny movie, but, uncharacteristically for Pixar movies, a few of the jokes are a little on the cheap side. Still, A Bug's Life is stuffed with creative ideas, fun characters (Kevin Spacey's Hopper is a great villain), lively Randy Newman (of "Short People" fame) music, and terrific animation. I also really appreciate the messages behind the cute little bug story. There are lessons about noncomformity, the power of the imagination, facing up to bullies, and reaching goals despite your size. I'll always have enough of a sweet spot for Toy Story to love it a little more than this one, but it's hard to watch this and not think of it as a step up for Pixar.