A prequel that's almost as good as the original

Rating: 8/10 (7 April 2020)

Monsters University tells the story of how Mike and Sully, the lovable characters from Monsters Inc, meet at university. It tells of their conflict and their struggle to get to where they are in Monsters Inc.
There is only one thing wrong with Monsters University. It makes plot holes with the original. And I really hate that it does. Because in and of itself, Monsters University has a fantastic and engaging story. Although it doesn't create a world itself, the campus of the university is done to perfection. Every little detail is thought of. I can tell that the writers really looked around at a campus and thought "how can we make this monster-ish" and it shows.
The cast of characters is amazing. They all have realised personalities and it makes for great watching. Dean Abigail Hardscrabble is simply an incredible addition. She feels like a genuine monster and I very much enjoyed the scenes she was in. Furthermore, due to the scare course they have created for the movie, it makes the last scene where they put it to action really intriguing. We see how the course mixes with their personality and limitations. Really fantastic.
However, a small personal thing about characters that I would have loved to see and I'm not annoyed it didn't happen, I just wanted to see what Pixar would have done with it. I would love to have seen Celia Mae (The snake-cyclops hybrid) appear, however briefly. Perhaps in the background, revealed her major and maybe shown why Mike was so obsessed with her in Monsters Inc. Just a thought.
Randall's backstory is a detail thrown in at the end and it's really clever. I wasn't expecting it to appear the way it did. I was expecting the reason to be simply just that Sully stole Mike from him. Put in true Pixar fashion my expectations were subverted and I loved what they did with it.
Another detail I absolutely adored was the fact that we saw the scare floor at several different generations. And what I loved about this is that we see that the monsters become more diverse the more generations we go down. It showed that children became harder to scare and the need for stranger and creepier monsters. A touch that I thought inspired.
Overall, great watching and if it weren't for those plot holes, would be a certain favourite.