Even though It's A Prequel, "Monsters University" Continues to Surprise Us With Profound Insights

Rating: 10/10 (3 July 2013)

Like "Monsters, Inc.", "Monsters University" (MU) won't win any recognition for its originality. Relating the tale of the first encounter between all-eye green cyclops Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and blue, hulking, bear-like James "Sully" Sullivan (John Goodman) at the titular institute of higher "scare" learning, MU cribs all over the place. As other posters have noticed, MU borrows fragments of other college-themed movies like "Animal House", the Harry Potter movie heptology (seven films), and even a smidgen of "Back to School". Most tellingly, however, MU is heavily in debt to "The Hunger Games", since the meets held to determine which monster fraternities will be eliminated from the prestigious "scare curriculum" and even from the university take up the bulk of the film. MU robustly and hilariously satirizes the aspects of college and frat life you would expect, but later reveals unexpected insights about the limits of desire, determination, and knowledge, and learning what your true place in the world is.
"Monsters, Inc." focused largely on Sully. This time, in MU, Mike is mostly in the spotlight. We first see him as an appealing schoolkid (voiced by Noah Johnston) with huge aspirations to become a top scarer at the scare factory. Little Mike is sharp enough, and studious enough in..."scareology"... I guess to earn a place at the university. However, he faces two tough obstacles. One, although Mike may have nailed the cerebral, technical aspects of scaring, he may not really be inherently scary. Two, the imperious and disdainful Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren), a cross between a dragon, a praying mantis, and a centipede, candidly and harshly tells Mike he is not a scarer.
There may be a third obstacle. Sully is also attending the university, but he is literally a goof-off party animal because he thinks his family "scaring" pedigree will get him through. So obviously, and perhaps predictably, Mike and Sully aren't friends at first sight. At first, they're not even dorm mates (at least that cliché is avoided for a while); Mike is first paired with Randall "Randy" Boggs, the later reptilian invisible monster in "Monsters, Inc." That soon changes as an assembly mishap involving a cherished scare canister forces the irate Dean to eject Mike and Sully from the "scare curriculum" and pair them off as opposite roommates at the unpopular Oozma Kappa (OK) fraternity.
OKs members are middle-aged squid-like former salesmonster Don (Joel Murry), the bickering two-headed Terri/Terry (Sean Hayes/Dave Foley), the five-eyed Flounder-like Scott (Peter Sohn), and ex-con elbow-macaroni shaped Art (Charlie Day). Even though OK is kinda nerdy and non-scary, Mike convinces the Dean to allow the OK frat to compete in the "Scare Games"; if they survive the games, all of OKs members stay in the scare curriculum; if they don't survive, Mike, and perhaps Sully will be sent packing. Will OK be OK enough to do it? Will Mike and Sully realize their "scare dreams"? Again, on the surface, MU plays with the framework of the college/fraternity movie and seems to be going where you think it's going. But MU is somewhat surprisingly subtler and deeper than that. It suggests that drive, persistence, hard work and book knowledge are good things to have, but do not necessarily take you where you want to go. Sometimes serendipity intervenes and shows you your true path in life (it's a "Mr. Holland's Opus" thing). Also, those same qualities alone may not predict success; additional qualities such as cunning, cleverness, and "misdirection" can come in handy. MU also suggests that even the most outwardly self-assured people hide reservoirs of self-doubt and fear. However, teamwork and mental focus can overcome those fears and perform amazing feats than no one person can hope to achieve. Most importantly, MU demonstrates that failure can be the steppingstones to ultimate triumph. We know from "Monsters, Inc." that Mike and Sully succeeded in getting jobs at the "scare" factory. MU shows the surprising steppingstones they took to get there.