Safe and Familiar but Generally Inessential

Rating: 6/10 (6 December 2013)

Cute, inoffensive family fare; it's nice to get back in touch with two of my favorite Pixar characters, but this film is so light, airy and spacious I couldn't help wondering if we all might have been better served by a short featurette. Most of the returning secondary cast is relegated to brief cameos - particularly Steve Buscemi's serpentine villain Randall, who pops in and out in a set of very brief flashes - and their replacements generally play one note at best. In its heart, Monsters U is dying to mimic the kind of campus-friendly formula perfected by Animal House and Revenge of the Nerds, but it's kneecapped by a much younger target audience and the cast feels almost universally shoehorned into unfamiliar terrain. It enjoys some lively moments and a few solid laughs, plus the banter between Goodman and Crystal is as sharp as ever, but the scope feels much, much smaller than the preceding Monsters Inc. and the story never really shifts out of first gear.