Boo Who?
As the year winds down, the most breathlessly and apprehensively awaited releases left on the schedule offer whimsy and reverie. We’ve had enough of the real world for now, so we look forward to leaving it behind and joining the company of Harry Potter and Frodo Baggins. Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter will no doubt join Shrek atop the list of the year’s most profitable films as audiences head to multiplexes craving an escape, a looking glass to a happier, shinier, prettier place.
Monsters, Inc., the latest offering from the Pixar folks responsible for the Toy Story films and A Bug’s Life, provides such an entry point — literally. The film posits that behind every child’s closet door is a portal to a world inhabited by monsters, all of whom work for a corporation that provides energy for a city named Monstropolis that looks like a Manhattan populated by Maurice Sendak creations. At Monsters Inc., the motto is “We scare because we care.” But the company is in trouble. Screams, the source of “clean energy,” are in short supply: Children are becoming inured to the company’s brand of antiquated horrors, and the city is in danger of suffering rolling blackouts.
The creatures punch in, fill their yellow canisters with screams, meet their quotas and vie for the title of Scarer of the Month, a position long held by furry, huggable blue beastie James P. Sullivan (voiced by John Goodman), who bares his fangs only on the job. Sully’s scare assistant is also his best friend, roommate and trainer, Mike Wazowski, a green one-eyed blob with spindly arms and legs and the voice of a Catskills comic (Billy Crystal). It’s Mike’s job to ensure that Sully isn’t overtaken by an oily chameleon named Randall (Steve Buscemi), whose ruthlessness and sloppiness could lead to the downfall of Monsters Inc., if not all of Monstropolis.
The monsters’ comfortable existence is thrown into tumult when a little girl, whom Sully nicknames Boo, crosses over into their world, where the touch of a human is thought to be fatal. The sight of germ squads in yellow biohazard suits is the film’s sole touch of realism, a case of unfortunate timing.
To soft-touch Sully, Boo is as much pet as child, as much a source of amusement as possible font of lethal contagions; to Boo, Sully is nothing more than an overgrown kitty. As much as the frantic Mike wants to ship the kid back to her world — he initially considers the cuddly, burbling little girl, voiced by Mary Gibbs, a “killing machine” — Sully wants to keep the child, whose laughs are more potent than screams. But she’s in as much jeopardy as the monsters; Randall wants Boo to be the guinea pig in a horrific experiment that could save the company but devastate all childkind.
Monsters, Inc., codirected by Peter Docter, David Silverman and Lee Unkrich, makes the first Toy Story look like Steamboat Willie. It’s visually breathtaking without begging you to be gee-whiz impressed. And its compelling, complex story is more tangible and emotional than any live-action film released by a major studio this year. The subtext allows for myriad interpretations: It’s about prejudice, office politics, alienation and, not least of all, the power a laugh holds over a scream. But Monsters, Inc. is also as giddy and antic as any great Warner Bros. cartoon of the 1930s and ’40s, and it bears seeing more than once, if only to allow for the sight gags that play second fiddle to the plot, a rarity in animation. In other words, it’s the perfect movie.
