Director: Dan Scanlon
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 1.5
Underwhelming prequel to the successful (and memorable) Monsters, Inc. (which came out in the early aughts) takes burly Sully (John Goodman) and one-eyed Mike (Billy Crystal) back to their "college days" in their quest to learn how to be professional "scarers." Pixar, creatively stunted with this one, decides to 'borrow' from bad 80's college movies for their core premise of a fraternity full of misfits (led by Sully and Mike) competing against the "popular" houses on campus: the jokes are poor and the charm of seeing the heroes interact with each other (and the human world) is missing. One of the major problems, for me at least, is that college life can be so ridiculous they could have sent up so many downright absurd aspects of it and yet they fail to capitalize on the opportunity - there's a quick 'party' scene, but it ends quickly with a ho-hum tarring-and-feathering gag. It does conclude with a neat little moral, however, about how hard work and dedication to a job - of going from the mail room all the way up the line - can be rewarding in itself, slapping the notion of Entitlement right in its goofy, misshapen head.
