Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Monsters University


            The wonderfully bizarre world of Monsters University provides plenty of fascinatingly bizarre creatures and interesting visuals.  The story, however, is completely unoriginal.  Still, as far as watchability goes, this is very watchable. 

Rating :
7 out of 10 stars (based purely on watchability factor)


Links
For an intelligent review of the first movie, see Whisky Prajer here.

Link of the Day
What is language and why does it matter? by Noam Chomsky (2013)

2 comments:

dpreimer said...

I think I'd rate it a "6": passably entertaining, but not much more. The "College Competition" template was completely lacking in innovation or surprise. And the characters: I thought Sullivan was rather artfully rendered, but I was slack-jawed to discover that the big-talking, let-the-other-guy-do-the-work Mike Wazowski was, originally, an over-achiever with an OCD attitude toward doing things by the book. Bit of a leap, that.

On the other hand, I was pleased to see how Lasseter declined the easy, "Because you have accomplished the unimaginable, I will overlook your cheating and send you straight-to-the-top" ending. They still had to start in the mail-room. You don't get much of that -- rarely in kids' movies, and almost never in the movies for grown-ups.

So, okay: maybe a 7.

Joel Swagman said...

Yeah, these ratings are tricky. I was entertained by this movie, and for me at least that's enough to put it into 6-7 territory right there, even if objectively the film has a number of flaws. And I'll admit I may have been over-generous. Still, the sheer number of bizarre creatures in this movie kept my short attention from wandering too much.
It had been years since I saw the original, so I didn't even notice the continuity gap between Mike Wazowski in Monsters Inc, and Mike Wazowski in Monsters University. But thanks for pointing that out.