Monsters, Inc.

Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 computer animated comedy film and the fourth feature-length film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. The film was released to theaters by Walt Disney Pictures in the United States on November 2, 2001, in Australia on December 26, 2001, and in the United Kingdom on February 8, 2002. Monsters, Inc. was written by Jack W. Bunting, Jill Culton, Peter Docter, Ralph Eggleston, Dan Gerson, Jeff Pidgeon, Rhett Reese, Jonathan Roberts and Andrew Stanton. It was directed by Pete Docter, Lee Unkrich, and David Silverman. ^[1]

Monsters, Inc. premiered in the United States on October 28, 2001, and went into general release on November 2, 2001 and was a commercial and critical success, grossing over $525,366,597 worldwide.^[2] Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes also reported extremely positive reviews with a fresh 95% approval rating.^[3]

This film was rated G by the MPAA.

Plot

Monstropolis is a 1930s retro city set in a monster-inhabited world, and Monsters, Inc., is the city's power company. Monsters, Inc. sends its employees to human children's bedrooms to scare the children, through teleportation doors set up on the work floor. The screams of children generate electric power for the city. However, the monsters believe that children themselves are toxic, and go to great lengths to prevent contact; should a monster be touched by a child or their belongings, the Child Detection Agency (CDA) is alerted to sanitize the affected being. With increasing numbers of children becoming desensitized by mass media, Monsters, Inc. is finding it difficult to scare the children enough to meet the power demands of the city.

One night, James P. Sullivan ("Sulley"), Monsters, Inc.'s top scarer, finds a door on the work floor after hours - in violation of policy. Peering inside, he finds the child's room empty. Sulley hides when he hears Randall Boggs, a competitive co-worker, enter the work floor and return the door back to the company's door vault. Sulley prepares to leave but finds that a human girl has followed him through the door, thinking him to be a giant kitty. Terrified of contamination, Sulley quickly hides the child and gets hold of Mike Wazowski, his co-worker and lifelong friend, to figure out the situation. Together at Sulley's home, they discover that being touched by the child is not harmful at all, and that when she laughs, surrounding electrical power surges to incredible levels. Sulley nicknames the child "Boo" and becomes her caretaker until they can get her back home.

Sulley and Mike disguise Boo as a monster and return to Monsters, Inc. the next day. As Mike attempts to get the right door to return Boo, Boo wanders off into the plant, with Sulley giving chase. They accidentally stumble upon Randall and his "scream extractor", a device that takes the screams directly from a child, which requires Randall to actually kidnap the child from their room and bring to the extractor. Sulley takes Boo and attempts to tell Monsters, Inc.'s CEO, Henry J. Waternoose, about Randall, but is forced to demonstrate his scaring skills to new employees before he can do so. When he scares the robot subject, Boo becomes frightened of him, and reveals herself as a human. Sulley tries to explain the situation to Waternoose, but comes to realize that Waternoose actually conceived the whole scream extractor plan to keep Monsters, Inc. from going out of business. To keep them quiet, Waternoose orders Sulley and Mike exiled to the human world, and gives Boo to Randall to extract her screams.

Sulley and Mike, stranded in the Himalayas, realize that Boo's life is in danger, and find a nearby village where they locate a door connected to the Monsters, Inc. work floor. They are just in time to save Boo from the extractor, and attempt to catch Randall, eventually leading to a chase on and through the millions of doors in the door vault. They eventually capture Randall and push him through a door, and then smash the door to pieces to prevent him returning through it. Sulley, Mike, and Boo then lure Waternoose into a trap, forcing him to reveal his plan while they were recording it as to present the information to the CDA. Waternoose is arrested and Sulley is lauded as a hero, but the CDA insists that Boo must return to her world. Sulley and Mike say goodbye to Boo, and watch as the CDA put her door through a wood chipper, reducing it to splinters, one of which Sulley holds onto as a keepsake.

Sometime later, Sulley has become the CEO of Monsters, Inc., and has changed their approach: instead of scaring children, they make them laugh, which generates significantly more energy, making all the employees and children happy. Mike reveals a special project to Sulley: he has managed to rebuild Boo's door save the one piece Sulley kept, and invites him to finish it. Sulley places the last piece and enters the door, where Boo instantly recognizes him, much to Sulley's happiness.

Voice cast

Main article: List of Monsters, Inc. characters

• John Goodman ... James P. "Sulley" Sullivan
• Billy Crystal ... Michael "Mike" Wazowski
• Mary Gibbs ... Boo
• Steve Buscemi ... Randall Boggs
• James Coburn ... Henry J. Waternoose III
• Jennifer Tilly ... Celia
• Bob Peterson ... Roz
• John Ratzenberger ... Abominable Snowman
• Frank Oz ... Fungus
• Bonnie Hunt ... Ms. Flint
• Jeff Pidgeon ... Mr. Bile
• Dan Gerson ... Needleman and Smitty
• Sam Black ...George Sanderson

References to other Pixar films

Main article: List of Pixar film references

Recurring Gags

• Excited and frightened Monsters making claims of the supernatural powers a child possesses are much like alien abduction stories humans report to the media.

• Roz bringing up Mike's paperwork upon each confrontation with her.

• "2319!" The gag used 3 times on one monster, and once on a CDA worker involving contamination by contact with a human child's possessions and the cataclysmic and excessive methods of cleaning the contamination and its immediate area. The term 2319 refers to the twenty third and nineteenth letters of the alphabet. W and S respectively, and relate directly to the offending article of the child's clothing. Namely a White Sock.

• Mike's shadowing of Sulley's success, (ie his face is covered on the television commercial or hindered by a barcode on a magazine cover next to him) and his subsequent excitement that despite this he still has a piece of the spotlight.

Trivia

Pixar owner Steve Jobs' 'other career' as CEO of Apple, Inc. (then Apple Computer, Inc.) is alluded to in one scene, where the back page of Mike's magazine shows a Macintosh PowerBook ad with the tagline, 'Scare Different' (a reference to Apple's infamous Chiat/Day devised 'Think Different' campaign).

Other media

Manga

• A manga version of Monsters, Inc. was made by Hiromi Yamafuji and distributed in Kodansha's Comic Bon Bon magazine in Japan; the manga was published in English by TOKYOPOP until it became out of print.

On ice

• Feld Entertainment currently tours a Monsters, Inc. edition of their Disney on Ice skating tour.

Video games

• A series of video games, and a multi-platform video game were created, based on the movie.

Monsters, Inc. Quiz Game

Cast

• Fred Tatasciore as Sullivan.
• Billy Crystal as Mike Wazowski.
• Molly Lin as Boo.

Playables

Math Game the playable is Sullivan. Quiz Game the playable is Mike and Boo.

Additional short film

• A short was made by Pixar in 2002 named Mike's New Car, in which the two main characters have assorted misadventures with a car Mike has just bought. This film was not screened in theaters, but is included with the DVD release of Monsters, Inc.

Theme park attractions

Monsters, Inc. has inspired three attractions at Disney theme parks across the globe.

• In 2006, Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue! opened at Disney's California Adventure at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. The dark ride was developed to boost the theme park's lagging attendance, and was quite successful in doing so, at least for a period of time.
• In 2007, Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor opened at the Magic Kingdom at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. The show is improvisational in nature, and features the opportunity for Guests to interact with the monster comedians, and even submit jokes of their own via text message. The attraction has been praised on it being original but has been criticized for being in Tomorrowland.^[4]
• In 2009, Monsters, Inc: Ride And Go Seek will open at Tokyo Disneyland at the Tokyo Disney Resort in Chiba, Japan.

Music

For details, see Monsters, Inc. (soundtrack).

The score was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score and the song "If I Didn't Have You" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Awards

• Monsters, Inc. won the Academy Award for Best Song (Randy Newman, after 15 previous nominations, for If I Didn't Have You). It was nominated for Best Animated Feature, Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing and Best Music, Original Score.
• This movie, and Shrek are the first pair of computer generated (CG) animated movies to win Academy Awards in the same year. Monsters, Inc. won for Best Song of 2001, and Shrek won for Best Animated Feature of 2001.

Trailers

One Pixar tradition is to create trailers for their films that do not contain footage from the released film. Trailers for this film include:

• Sulley and Mike stumble into the wrong bedroom. Sulley blames Mike for the mistake, and the two have a fight, which is quickly resolved.
• In a trailer shown before the first Harry Potter film, Sulley is shown playing charades with Mike, but Mike is unable to guess the phrase "Harry Potter". The clip never specifically mentions Harry Potter, but the end states that Monsters, Inc. is playing right next door. Afterwards, Mike attempts to charade by waving his arms in the air to make a star shape. A bored Sulley quickly and correctly guesses Star Wars. A bewildered Mike asks how he does it. A different version has Mike using a hula hoop, and Sulley correctly guesses Saturn.

See also

• List of animated feature-length films
• List of computer-animated films
• List of Monsters, Inc. characters

References

External links

• Information at Pixar's site
• Monsters, Inc. at the Internet Movie Database
• Monsters, Inc. at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Monsters, Inc. at Rotten Tomatoes
• Monsters, Inc. at Metacritic

• Monsters, Inc. at Box Office Mojo