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.

The Village Barbershop

2008 old-fart-being-rejuvenated-by-young-person movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Poor Art. He's still recovering from the death of his wife when his partner and the barbershop passes away. The business is struggling, especially with the landlord looking for any reason to throw him out and make a lot more money with another venture. Enter Gloria, a young hell cat with problems of her own who wants to be his new assistant. He reluctantly agrees.

My lukewarm feelings about this movie doesn't change my opinion that The Ratz needs to be in more movies. I mean, he practically carried Cheers on his beastly shoulders, and he's arguably the reason why The Empire Strikes Back is the movie that it is. And, of course, Pixar just wouldn't be Pixar without The Ratz. Anyway, he's good, master mustachioed badass thespian who could probably take on thirty Clint Eastwoods in a fight. Matrix style! And yeah, I know that Clint Eastwood is around ninety years old, but he's Clint Eastwood and there are thirty of them. Still an impressive feat in my book. This Shelly Cole actress is pretty good, too, but I went through the bulk of this movie thinking she was somebody else. You know, that actress who always plays this sort of role. But it's not her at all. Cole's done very little unless you count Punk Girl God in an episode of the short-lived Joan of Arcadia or Filthy-Haired Girl in Art School Confidential as more than very little. No, the acting isn't really the problem here at all. The problem is that the characters aren't nearly interesting enough to keep this thing going. The Ratz's character is also sent, predictably, through some miserable moments that kind of suck the momentum and sweetness from the movie, too. There are also just too many of these movies where a lonely curmudgeon learns to embrace life again with the help of a youngster. Shut up, all you Up haters.