Pixar was once known as a group of film-makers with a perfect track-record. Now, with movies like Brave that didn't give people the oomph they expected, and an influx of sequels that are making people doubt the studio's creativity as of late, that reputation has dwindled. Monsters University is Pixar's latest film, and it pains me to say, as a big fan of Pixar, that this movie is very bad. There are some good laughs and the movie looks nice, but it's aimless and sometimes even mean.
Monsters University is a prequel to Monsters Inc., following Mike and Sully as college students. In Monsters Inc., it's established early on that these two are amongst the best in their profession, and this movie aims to tell the story of how they got to that point. And it really doesn't tell that story at all! The story of how they actually get good at their profession is told through a contentless time-lapse at the end of the film, after the climax. What actually makes up the bulk of this movie is a meandering lot of comedy, visual effects and underdeveloped, lazy, senseless plot that actually manages to offend.
About half of the jokes are tired and groan-worthy affairs that have been done to death in other movies. Get ready to see a stock-nerdy kid moan at his mom for making him look lame because she's a mom and that's lame. The other half are very funny and very clever, playing off of the stereotypes of the characters. That same lame mom character has a particularly hilarious bit when we learn about her music tastes. And continuing on a positive note, the movie is very colorful and animates very well. The characters really come to life and some cool things are done visually every now and again.
But I can't be too positive. Two big things really ground my gears, which brings me to my conclusion that this is a very bad movie. The first is that the movie establishes an interesting, tough dilemma, but really doesn't solve it at all. Mike and Sully both want to be great scarers, but Mike lacks natural talent and struggles actually performing, and Sully is too caught up on resting on his laurels and doesn't want to hit the books. Do they better themselves? Sometimes they do things that are impressive within the context of this movie, but it always feels fake. Mike doesn't find any solution at all for his problem, and Sully consistently refuses to hit the books and try harder. And for whatever reason, even though they both seem to have equal problems to me, the movie looks down upon Mike more and Sully less, which is jarring.
The second problem is what actually managed to strike me as unethical, which is the elitism that the movie defends. Other professions besides scaring are always treated as a complete joke by this movie. At one point Mike is discouraged from scaring, and goes to a class about the production of scare canisters, which is an important role in this society, but even the professor hates it. There are a few stock-nerd characters that Mike is trapped into playing with in a scaring competition, and two of them show passion for unique career choices of their own, but by the end of the film they still decide to go for scaring. Their "skill" that is "gained" in scaring is even faker than Mike and Sully's because their apparent skill gain is usually just meant to be goofy anyway, because the notion of these characters doing well with scaring is laughable.
This isn't a good movie. Unlike Cars, I can't even say that it isn't bad, because it is. It's very bad. The movie struggles to make a point, and when it does, it's not very nice. There are some laughs that are truly great, and Pixar is still able to make a very pretty movie, but that's not enough to pull this lazy movie out of the mud. If this wasn't a sequel, I wouldn't believe you if you told me it's a Pixar movie.
