REVIEW: Monsters University

Monsters University (2013): Dir. Dan Scanlon. Written by: Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird and Dan Scanlon. Featuring the voices of: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Charlie Day, Dave Foley, Sean Hayes, Helen Mirren, Alfred Molina, Joel Murray and Peter Sohn. Rated G (believable college shenanigans but astonishingly still 100% family-friendly). Running time: 104 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

There are movies that are good kids’ entertainment and there are movies that are simply good entertainment. Monsters University is good entertainment. I laughed out loud more during it than any animated film in recent memory and, as a relatively recent college graduate, even felt a nostalgic pang or two for my campus days.

A prequel to Disney/Pixar’s 2001 film Monsters Inc., it tells the story of how Mike and Sully, our monster heroes from that movie, met in college and further explores the monster world. A bit of backstory is necessary to understand that world but Monsters University does a nice job filling you in if it’s been a while since you saw the first one.

In Monsters Inc. we learned that the monsters that hide under children’s beds and in their closets are not the result of overactive imaginations or side effects of an undigested late night snack. They are very real and exist in their own world, using the energy from children’s screams to power their society. The geographic and metaphysical relation between this world and the human world remains a mystery but monsters are able to freely travel from the Monsters Inc. headquarters to a given child’s bedroom through a specially designed door that acts as a portal.

The monsters themselves vary in shape, color and size. Some have wings and claws, others have tentacles and multiple heads. Mike Wazowski (voiced by Billy Crystal) is round and green, and his single eyeball takes up nearly his whole body. When we first see him in childhood flashback, he is no bigger than a volleyball. A puny runt by any monster’s standards, Mike is in awe of the Scarers, the professional scream team at Monsters Inc., who he catches a glimpse of on a school field trip to the facility.

You’re too small, you’re not scary enough, you’ll never be a Scarer, Mike’s classmates tell him. He sets out to prove them wrong by studying relentlessly and working hard to get into Monsters University. A student can study all sorts of subjects at MU but anyone who’s anyone is in the Scare Program. The terrifying, dragon-like Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren) personally oversees the program. She interrupts Professor Knight’s (the always professorial Alfred Molina) Scaring 101 class to lecture the incoming freshmen on a strict, new exam at the end of their first semester. Fail it and you’re out of the program.

That’s no sweat for James Sullivan (John Goodman), a shaggy, blue-haired beast with a ferocious roar. Looking leaner than his older self in Monsters Inc. (and in an inspired touch, styling the fur on his head in a faux-hawk), Sully comes from a family of Scarers. He assumes he’ll be able to coast through college on the legacy of his family name.

A fierce rivalry forms between Mike and Sully, which ultimately lands them in hot water with Hardscrabble. In order to redeem themselves, they must team up and win the Scare Games, an annual tournament held by MU’s greek life. Helping them is Oozma Kappa, the lamest monster frat on campus. These new characters include the two-headed Terri and Terry (Sean Hayes and Dave Foley), a many-eyed blob named Squishy (Peter Sohn), the oblong furry freak Art (Charlie Day) and Don Carlton (Joel Murray), a former salesman with a moustache shaped like bat wings who is going back to school to learn “the computers.”

The rivals-the-pals story is a bit familiar but it’s executed well here and the pleasures of Monsters University are in the embellishments. There are endless sight gags in this exquisitely animated film and the script is genuinely hilarious at times. I continue to be impressed too with Pixar animators’ abilities to create complex emotions on their characters’ faces. There are several key turning points in the plot conveyed by a subtle glance or facial expression.

And it is this emotional sensitivity, a Pixar trademark for nearly two decades now, that makes Monsters University such a satisfying experience. The script, written by Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird and Dan Scanlon (who also directed the movie), has no shortage of wit and humor but it also has heart. This is a compassionate story about the importance of hard work and of realizing that your shortcomings may actually be strengths if viewed from a different angle.

These are excellent, positive messages for a kid in the audience and when these themes are expressed as gracefully as they are here, they ring true no matter how old you are.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/28/13

REVIEW: The Three Stooges

The Three Stooges (2012): Dir. Peter and Bobby Farrelly. Written by: Mike Cerrone and the Farrelly brothers. Starring: Chris Diamantopoulos, Sean Hayes, Will Sasso, Jane Lynch, Larry David and Sofia Vergara. Rated PG (Nonstop comic violence, all in good fun). Running time: 92 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

Very few comedies run through as much goofiness as cheerfully and with such lickity-split pacing as The Three Stooges, a revival of and loving tribute to those kings of slapstick. Directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly and written by the Farrellys and Mike Cerrone, The Three Stooges understands there is a certain unbridled comic joy that occurs when some dunce hatches an idiotic idea and his pals agree without hesitation to help him carry it out.

The Farrelly brothers are certainly not newcomers to this approach. Their debut, Dumb and Dumber, a film I treasure dearly, more or less features the same shtick as this one with one less stooge. That was nearly twenty years ago and now they take on the improbable task of revitalizing the antics of Larry, Curly and Moe for an audience that might not share their nostalgia for the old skits.

The Stooges were bonking one another over the head as early as the 1930s and though the Farrelleys plant them in the present day for this movie, the Stooges’ comedy has been diligently preserved. Aside from a few predictable jokes about Facebook poking (the Stooges are of course more familiar with eye poking) and an appearance from the Jersey Shore cast, the gags in The Three Stooges are mostly classic slapstick.

The Farrellys execute their craft by simple means – a lot of trick rubber hammers and sound effects – and skillfully choreograph scene after scene of scene of inspired mayhem. The Stooges are a kind of living Rube Goldberg machine; a single push or slap sets off a chain reaction of cartoon violence that continues until one or all three are flat on the ground, nursing their injuries. Every joke is carefully set up and watching the inevitable play out is a lot of fun. When Larry blindly shoots an arrow into the sky, you know it will make a well-timed reappearance by the end of the bit.

Much credit must also be given to Chris Diamantopoulos, Sean Hayes and Will Sasso, who play Moe, Larry and Curly, respectively. They bound around the sets with admirable energy and enthusiasm, grunting and whooping and whining when applicable. Though they pretty much never stop thwacking each other or slinging insults back and forth (these come most often from Moe, the de facto leader of the trio), the Stooges, oddly enough, also have a believable friendship. For all their antagonism, at the end of the day there is no one else they would rather be with. After all, who else would tolerate their company for more than a minute?

Certainly not Sister Mary-Mengele (a gender bending Larry David), a nun at the orphanage the Stooges call home and frequent victim to their sometimes accidental, sometimes intentional anarchy. Also making appearances are Jane Lynch as Mother Superior and, in a villainous turn, Sofia Vergara, whose Betty Boop proportions make her a nice fit for this brand of cartoonish physical comedy. Inexplicably, Jennifer Hudson and Kate Upton also show up as nuns but they don’t get much screen time or many jokes.

There is a plot too which I have neglected to mention that involves the Stooges needing to gather $830,000 to save the orphanage. Though the film follows this narrative throughout, it doesn’t grant it much importance. The movie is divided into three segments – each with their own retro-style title card – that ignore whatever progress the plot might have made in the previous skit and instead simply mark a change in location for the Stooges’ hijinks.

Having no more than the most cursory knowledge of the Three Stooges, I am surprised to say how much I enjoyed this film. The comedy is shamelessly lowbrow but also innocent. All of the Stooges’ friends in this movie are children, which I do not think was ever a detail included in the old skits but feels like the right choice here. The Stooges are very stupid but the Farrellys are smart about being stupid and, I imagine, very happy to be able to honor their heroes with a movie that certainly does the original trio no injustice.

- Steve Avigliano, 4/15/12