Monsters, Inc.

Monsters, Inc.
UK teaser poster
Directed by	Pete Docter Co-directors: Lee Unkrich David Silverman
Produced by	Darla K. Anderson Executive: John Lasseter Andrew Stanton Associate: Kori Rae
Screenplay by	Andrew Stanton Dan Gerson Robert L. Baird Rhett Reese Jonathan Roberts
Story by	Peter Docter Jill Culton Ralph Eggleston Jeff Pidgeon
Starring	John Goodman Billy Crystal Mary Gibbs Steve Buscemi James Coburn Bob Peterson Jennifer Tilly John Ratzenburger
Music by	Randy Newman
Studio	Pixar Animation Studios
Distributed by	Walt Disney Pictures Buena Vista Distribution
Release date(s)	November 2, 2001 (2001-11-02)
Running time	94 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$115 million[1]
Gross revenue	$525,366,597[1]
Followed by	Monsters, Inc. 2

Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 American computer-animated film and the fourth feature-length film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. It was directed by Pete Docter, co-directed by Lee Unkrich and David Silverman, and was written by Jack W. Bunting, Jill Culton, Peter Docter, Ralph Eggleston, Dan Gerson, Jeff Pidgeon, Rhett Reese, Jonathan Roberts, and Andrew Stanton.^[2]

The film was released to theatres 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. It was a commercial and critical success, grossing over $525,366,597 worldwide.^[1] Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes also reported extremely positive reviews with a fresh 95% approval rating.^[3]

A sequel to the film has been announced, scheduled for release on November 2, 2012.^[4] Both Goodman and Crystal will return as the voices of Sulley and Mike respectively.

Plot

Monsters, Inc. is the main power utility in Monstropolis, a monster-populated city. The company uses power from human children who scream, scared by company employees. These monsters enter the children's rooms through closets linked to special doors on the company's scarefloor. But children are becoming hard and less scared to frighten these days, and the company finds itself struggling to meet the power that is needed for Monstropolis.

The company's top scarer is James "Sulley" P. Sullivan (John Goodman). One day, while turning in some left-over paperwork, Sulley sees a door alone on the Scare Floor, its power turned on. Checking the door's room, he finds it empty. He quickly discovers that a child, a 2-year-old girl (Mary Gibbs), has followed him back to the monster world. Although Sulley fears human contact—monsters believe that humans are toxic—she is not afraid of him, and calls him "Kitty."

Sulley asks for help from his partner, Michael "Mike" Wazowski (Billy Crystal). Dressing the girl up as a monster and calling her "Boo", the two later try to return her. They discover that Randall Boggs (Steve Buscemi), Sulley's rival for top scarer, is bringing children into the monster world to subject them to a device to extract their screams. Sulley and Mike, carrying Boo, attempt to alert the CEO, Henry J. Waternoose III (James Coburn). However, Waternoose asks Sulley to demonstrate his scare tactics, and when Sulley growls loudly, Boo reveals herself as a human child.

Waternoose takes Boo, promising to set things right. But then he reveals that he is in on Randall's side and betrays Sulley and Mike, banishing them to the Himalayas in Nepal. Sulley and Mike have a falling out. Sulley, only concerned about getting to Boo, quickly scavenges parts from stockpiles from an Abominable Snowman (John Ratzenberger), another exiled monster, and uses the parts as a sled. In the nearest village he uses a door to return to Monsters, Inc. He arrives in time to rescue Boo, shortly followed by Mike, who helps them to escape from Randall.

The three go into the company's door vaults in search of Boo's door. Boo's laughter in what looks like a roller coaster ride powers the millions of doors in storage. After a chase through many doors, Randall catches the companions and threatens Sulley. Now Boo is angry: she overcomes her fear of Randall, jumps on his back, pulls his antenna, and beats him with a baseball bat. Sulley throws him through a door into a caravan trailer, inwhich a little boy's hillbilly mother mistakes Randall for an alligator and hits him with a shovel, Mike and Sulley then throw and smashes the door to make sure Randall never comes back.

They return to the Scare Floor with a tape recorder and trick Waternoose into revealing his knowledge of the scare machine. Roz (Bob Peterson), the company's bookkeeper, reveals herself as the lead agent of the Child Detection Agency (or CDA), a group of government agents that deals with human contact, and capture Waternoose, who is then taken away. Roz then makes Sulley and Mike return Boo home, and her door is shredded, though Sulley keeps one of the wood splinters as a reminder.

A few months later, Sulley is the new CEO of Monsters, Inc., and has changed the company. Boo has taught him that children's laughter is 10 times more powerful than their screams of fear, and he now sends monsters to make children laugh. Mike and the other monsters now have a lot of fun, doing stand-up and dressing up in silly costumes. Mike shows Sulley a secret project he was working on, rebuilding Boo's door piece by piece. With Sulley's splinter in its place, the door is able to work again. As the film ends, Sulley peeks into the room. The audience does not see Boo, but hears her voice say, "Kitty!" (in a changed way indicating she is older) Sulley smiles, and the screen fades to black..

Voice cast

• John Goodman as James P. "Sulley" Sullivan, a large, furry blue monster with purple spots, best friend to Mike and the main protagonist of the film. At the start of the film, is Monsters, Inc.'s top scarer. After Waternoose's plan is revealed, Sulley becomes the CEO of the company, overseeing the collection of laughter from children.
• Billy Crystal as Michael "Mike" Wazowski, a green monster , Sulley's best friend and the deuteragonist of the film, a creature who is mostly an eyeball with hands and feet. Mike is Sulley's best friend and runs his station on the scare floor. After Sulley takes over, Mike becomes one of the monsters that helps extract laughs from children, using his stand up comedy. He also made cameos in Finding Nemo, Cars, WALL-E and Toy Story 3.
• Mary Gibbs as "Boo", a 2-year-old human girl and the tritagonist of the film that is inadvertently brought back to the monster world by Sulley. She appears unafraid of any of the strange monsters (except for Randall, who it turns out was the monster that would occupy her closet the most out of all the Monsters, Inc. monsters), and tries to explore the world on her own. In a book based on the film, it is revealed that Boo's real name is Mary Gibbs (the same name of her voice actress), and in the actual film, in the scene where she shows Sulley the drawing she made of Randall, in one of the corners of the drawing the name "Mary" can be seen.
• Steve Buscemi as Randall Boggs, an anthropomorphic chameleon-like monster and the main antagonist. Randall has the ability to change the color of his skin to camouflage himself. He is a direct rival to Sulley, attempting to earn the most Scares during shifts, and is in on Waternoose's plan to kidnap children from the human world.
• James Coburn as Mr. Henry J. Waternoose III, a monster crab and the secondary antagonist. At the start of the film, CEO of Monsters, Inc. This was James Coburn's last role in an animated work.
• Jennifer Tilly as Celia Mae, a Medusa-like monster with snakes instead of hair, Mike's girlfriend, and receptionist for the company. She playfully refers to Mike as "Googly Bear," while he refers to her as "Shmoopsie-Poo."
• Bob Peterson as Roz, a slug-like monster with a voice like Selma Diamond's, who works as a clerk for the Scare floor, but secretly is the top agent of the Child Detection Agency (CDA) who were seeking evidence for Waternoose's plan.
• John Ratzenberger as the Abominable Snowman, a yeti banished to the Himalayas.
• Frank Oz as Fungus, a three-eyed monster that works as Randal's assistant on the Scare floor, and while aware of the plan, is hesitant to help with its execution.
• Bonnie Hunt as Ms. Flint, a snake-like monster that trains new monsters in scaring tactics.
• Jeff Pidgeon as Thaddeus Bile, a monster, newly hired to Monsters, Inc., who tries, and fails, to impress Sulley and Mr. Waternoose with his scaring antics, but is able to use his clumsiness to extract laughs from children at the end of the film. Thaddeus' friends call him "Phlegm".
• Dan Gerson as Needleman and Smitty, two goofy monsters that work as janitors on the Scare Floor
• Sam Black as George Sanderson, a monster that has been decontaminated by the CDA Agents a couple of times for unintentionally bringing back stuff from the human world because of his assistant Charlie who thinks they have a 2319.

Cameos

• Wallace Shawn as Rex the Dinosaur, a neurotic dinosaur toy from Pixar's Toy Story trilogy. He appears briefly in the outtakes during the end credits.

Production

The idea for Monsters, Inc. started with a lunch in 1994. At this lunch was John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and Joe Ranft. One of the ideas that came out of the brainstorming session was a film about monsters. Docter's original idea revolved around a 30-year old man dealing with monsters, which he drew in a book as a child, coming back to bother him as an adult. Each monster represented a fear he had and conquering those fears caused the monsters to eventually disappear.^[5]

Docter started working on the script in 1996 and with Harley Jessup, Jill Culton and Jeff Pidgeon completed a draft treatment in February 1997. The initial story did not have the character of Mike Wazowski. He wasn't added until a story review meeting between Pixar and Disney in April 1998. The film went into production in 2000.^[6]

The release of Monsters, Inc. was almost delayed by a lawsuit brought by Lori Madrid against Pixar, Disney and Chronicle Books. The suit alleged the defendants had stolen her story There's a Boy in My Closet, which she had mailed out in October 1999 to a number of publishers, including Chronicle Books. The plaintiffs had requested a temporary injunction against the release of the film. Judge Clarence Brimmer, Jr. had a hearing on the injunction on November 1, 2001, the day before the film was to be released. He judged against the injunction, and the entire suit was thrown out on June 26, 2002.^[6]

Another lawsuit, by Stanley Mouse, alleged that the characters of Mike and Sulley were based on drawings he had tried to sell Hollywood in 1998.^[7]

Reception

The film received massively positive reviews. Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 95% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 164 reviews, with an average score of 7.9/10. The critical consensus is: Even though Monsters, Inc lacks the sophistication of the Toy Story series, it is a still delight for children of all ages.^[8] Among Rotten Tomatoes' Cream of the Crop, which consists of popular and notable critics from the top newspapers, websites, television, and radio programs,^[9] the film holds an overall approval rating of 88% based on 33 reviews.^[10] Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 78 based on 34 reviews.^[11]

Charles Taylor from Salon.com states: "It's agreeable and often funny, and adults who take their kids to see it might be surprised to find themselves having a pretty good time."^[12] A. O. Scott from The New York Times gave a positive review saying: "There hasn't been a film in years to use creative energy as efficiently as Monsters, Inc."^[13] Mike Clark from USA Today also gave a positive review saying: "Though the comedy is sometimes more frenetic than inspired and viewer emotions are rarely touched to any notable degree, the movie is as visually inventive as its Pixar predecessors."^[14] Reelviews film critic James Berardinelli, who gave the film 3 1/2 stars out of 4 wrote: "Monsters, Inc. is one of those rare family films that parents can enjoy (rather than endure) along with their kids." ^[15] Roger Ebert, film critic from Chicago Sun-Times, while praising the movie with 3 out of 4 stars, wrote: "Monsters, Inc. is cheerful, high-energy fun, and like the other Pixar movies, has a running supply of gags and references aimed at grownups."^[16] Lisa Schwarzbaum, a film critic for the Entertainment Weekly gave a B for the movie and wrote: "Everything from Pixar Animation Studios, the snazzy, cutting-edge computer animation outfit, looks really, really terrific, and unspools with a liberated, heppest-moms-and-dads-on-the-block iconoclasm."^[17]

Box office

Monsters, Inc. ranked number one at the box office its opening weekend, grossing $62,577,067 in North America. The film had a small drop-off of 27.2% over its second weekend, earning another $45,551,028. In its third weekend, the film experienced a larger decline of 50.1%, placing itself in the second position just after Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. However, in its fourth weekend, there was an increase of 5.9%. Making $24,055,001 that weekend, it is the seventh biggest fourth weekend ever for a film.^[18][19] As of September 26, 2002, the film has a total of $255,873,250 in the United States and Canada and $269,493,347 in other territories for a worldwide gross of $525,366,597.^[1] The film is Pixar's sixth highest grossing movie worldwide and fifth domestically.^[20]

Promotion

Monsters, Inc. was featured on Happy Meal toys, it was also featured on Tropicana with stickers shaped rectangularly.

Music

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 and nominations

Monsters, Inc. won the Academy Award for Best Song (Randy Newman, after 15 previous nominations, for If I Didn't Have You). It was also nominated for Best Animated Feature (lost to Shrek), and Best Music, Original Score (lost to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring).

References to other Pixar films

There are numerous references to other Pixar films to be found in Monsters, Inc.; one example is that near the end of the film, Boo hands Sulley a Jessie doll from Toy Story 2, the Luxo ball, and a plush of Nemo from Finding Nemo. Since Finding Nemo was the Pixar film that followed Monsters, Inc., it was a sneak peek to the upcoming film. When Randall is practicing his camouflage ability, one of the drop backgrounds is the distinctive cloud pattern from Toy Story. Another is when Randall arrives in the trailer, it is the trailer from A Bug's Life, and the pizza delivery truck from Toy Story is seen sitting next to it.

Also, in the bloopers of the film, Rex from the Toy Story films makes a cameo appearance.

Alternative versions

One month after the movie's theatrical release (on December 7, 2001) a version with alternative end credits was brought into theaters. There, the credits are accompanied by a "blooper reel", followed by the musical "Put That Thing Back Where it Came From or So Help Me", performed by the cast. This version can be found as a separate feature on the Collector's Edition DVD and in the credits of the 4:3 fullscreen DVD version, as well as the end credits of the R2-R5 widescreen version for Eastern Europe.

As is common for Pixar movies, international versions differ in the contents. Many English inscriptions are either removed or replaced by more generic symbols, especially in Monstropolis and at the Scare Floor. For instance, the "Stalk/Don't Stalk" traffic light is replaced by a green two-headed monster (for "Stalk") and a forbidding red hand (for "Don't Stalk"). Additionally, an animation of Sulley telling Boo to go to sleep was changed for the non-English version, as in the U.S. version, he holds up two fingers to illustrate "to" (since "two" and "to" rhyme in English) in "You - go - to - sleep". Several European DVDs contain only the "international" version, whereas the U.S. DVDs and U.S./U.K. BluRay contain the "U.S." version. Some of the examples for alternative angles can be seen in the bonus material of the 2-Disc DVD and Blu-ray of the film.

Sequel

A sequel to the film, with the working title of Monsters, Inc. 2, was announced in April 2010 and was expected to be released on November 16, 2012 in the US.^[21] It was then announced that Disney had moved the film's release date to November 2, 2012 to avoid competition with The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn.^[4] Pete Docter will not be returning as director.^[21]

Other media

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 all home video releases of Monsters, Inc., and on Pixar's dedicated Shorts DVD.

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 went out of print.

Video games

A series of video games, and a multi-platform video game were created, based on the film, such as a film adaptation, Monsters Inc., developed by A2M on PS2, PC, Game Boy Color, and GBA consoles in 2001.

On ice

Feld Entertainment toured a Monsters, Inc. edition of their Disney on Ice skating tour from 2003 to 2007.

Theme park attractions

Monsters, Inc. has inspired three attractions at Disney theme parks around the world.

• 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, replacing The Timekeeper. 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.
• In 2009, Monsters, Inc.: Ride & Go Seek opened at Tokyo Disneyland at the Tokyo Disney Resort in Chiba, Japan.

See also

• List of animated feature-length films
• List of computer-animated films

References

External links

• Monsters, Inc. at Pixar.com
• Monsters, Inc. at the Internet Movie Database
• Monsters Inc. 2 at the Internet Movie Database
• Monsters, Inc. at Allmovie
• Monsters, Inc. at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Monsters, Inc. at Rotten Tomatoes
• Monsters, Inc. at Metacritic
• Monsters, Inc. at Box Office Mojo