Top of the Class

Rating: 9/10 (26 June 2013)

I was skeptical that this second "Monsters" movie, a prequel, would be close to as good as the first one. Disney Pixar has few misses, but occasionally their sequels miss the mark, such as "Cars 2". I was curious as to how the writers were going to make a story about campus life but still hit the mark with the heart the first Monsters movie had. Although this movie may not have as much "heart" as the first, it does not underperform.
I thought the strength of the movie rests in the differences between the various monsters. There are many more monsters in this movie and we get a surface view of many of their strengths or humorous attributes and those with a larger storyline we get an even larger picture of. There are many different faces of the college campus, just like there are on a traditional college campus, and many of these different faces are entertaining or amusing. Although the voices and dialogue of the supporting cast is not on par with what we've come to expect in a saga like "Toy Story" it is fine, and often humorous, just not A caliber.
Also missing from this one is "Boo". Obviously she did not exist in this timeline, but some of the light hearted humanistic qualities are missing without her character. We do get some looks at some of the monsters that will be present in "Monsters Inc." such as Randall (Steve Buscemi), Roz, Mr. Waternoose, etc. My daughter personally loves George Sanderson (he was the tall orange furry monster from Monsters Inc. with the horn who was shaved after a child's sock landed on him) and even he has a few very brief cameos, but if you're not looking for them, you will miss them. Part of me wishes we could've seen more of this, but the filmmakers obviously didn't want this movie to just have inside jokes and relate to the next movie, they wanted it to be its own thing, and that it is.
I have recently seen Monsters Inc. a couple times in the last month, and probably 40 times or so over the past 10 years, many in the past few years with kids. That being said, although this movie doesn't have the newness of the monster world that "Monsters Inc." did, it was very entertaining, funny, and a lot of fun. There was nothing content-wise I would not want my children hearing or seeing, but very entertaining for people of all ages. I look forward to watching it many times in the future, and don't expect it to wear off anytime soon.