A Sheer Review of Monsters University

Funny thing is, I watched Monsters University on the very last day of its showing at a cinema near my place. So, I was lucky enough to be able to catch it on the very last day. Another thing is, I watched this alone. 1 adult ticket, in the smallest theatre, with so few other people.

But I'm glad I watched it. I have no doubt of Pixar's animation films. Thus I was sure from the start that Monsters University would at least be as good as Despicable Me 2, and even better.

The Blue Umbrella - made with photorealism techniques

The movie kicked off with a short animation features called 'The Blue Umbrella'. I really like it when a long animation feature had a short film before the main entree. Remember Wreck It Ralph? It had the Oscar award winning short animation feature 'Paperman' in the beginning of its movie. Very similar to 'Paperman', 'The Blue Umbrella' is a simple love story about two umbrellas, the red umbrella and the blue umbrella. The rest is standard. The blue umbrella tried to find the red, barely escaped dangers on the street, to finally be reunited with its owner, and then reunited at last with the red umbrella, whose owner somehow met with the blue's owner. On the final scene, the two umbrella holders sat down for a drink in a cafe outdoor, with their 2 in-love umbrellas finally had each other again. The End. 

The impact the short film had on me wasn't as deep as 'Paperman'. Other than beautiful scores and animation skills, 'The Blue Umbrella' failed to deliver a heart-warming love story between two non-living things. Maybe because the main characters are umbrellas, instead of the persons who hold the umbrellas. Or maybe because even with the dangers and struggles the blue umbrella had to get through, in the end blue couldn't save his own life and fight on his own. He's only an umbrella after all. He could only go in the direction where the wind blew, and fell in the middle of a busy road, almost hit by a car, saved by sewers, dustbins, and other living things on the street. He wanted to be with the red umbrella, but sadly he couldn't do it alone. Therefore, when the short movie ended, I smiled, but didn't want for more. It didn't leave a deep impression. For the animation techniques though, I have to speak differently. They are stunning. It's something called photorealism, and this techniques make the animation looks like live-action film, but it really is not. They're all animation, no matter how real they look. The umbrellas, the road, the city scenes, I almost think it's a combination of real and animation. But it's not. It's just how photorealism is. It's gorgeous. To top it of, the music scores are just as befitting. Pixar, as always, sets the bar high. 

Monsters University, on the other hand, managed to deliver all the aspects we want to see in a Pixar movie. The storyline might look simple, but along the way, we got to see how each character has developed and changed, from the beginning to the end of the movie. This is not an easy thing to do. We know for once that Despicable Me 2 didn't give us character developments. But Monsters University did. In a very child-friendly and beautiful way. I got to see the growth in Sully and Mike friendship, beside finally having known why Boggs hated Sully. Although its title is Monsters University, it turned out that Sully and Mike didn't graduate from it at all. They were expelled, and started working as mailmen in Monsters Inc., making their way to the very top, to their dream job as scarers. There's a nice lesson in that for children, letting them know while things might not go as planned, there are still many other ways to reach your destination if you're looking and trying hard enough.

As for the characters, I'm not really in love with them. One is for a fact that they're monsters, they cannot appear to be adorable or cute no matter how hard the animator tried. It's very different compared to the minions in Despicable Me. We don't know for sure what kind of creature the minions are (banana? potato?) but we don't give a damn. They look squishy, they speak gibberish, but they have personalities and are super cute. We want them to be real. I know for sure that I don't want Mike or Sully to be real. 

Ultimately, there are pros and cons in Monsters University, but it's still a movie that meets Pixar's standards. It has more good in it than it looks from the outside, you just have to watch it to find out why I speak highly of it.   

The monsters' faces aren't really the thing I dig from the film