A for Ambition

Rating: 10/10 (9 November 2019)

This is a movie that no one saw coming. Like, at all. But Pixar fans wanted to see more of Mike and Sulley, (Me included, Monsters, Inc. is one of my favorite Pixar movies.) So then this came out, made a ton of money, got positive reviews, and that's it. But there's a little more to this Monsters, Inc. prequel than meets the eye. (This is where I'm gonna start getting into spoilers. So in case you haven't already seen it but are interested, now's the time to find a spoiler-free review.) You can see where the story is headed, but it adds some interesting elements to make it less predictable. Mike was a book-smart honor roll student who wanted to be a scarer, and Sully was a cocky jock who thought studying was pointless. So yeah, they didn't really get off on the right foot. But when they get kicked out of the scare program and have to work together with a ragtag team of misfit monsters in the awesome scare games, they start to bond. But when it turns out Mike isn't scary and they only won because Sully messed with the settings on the last event, he tries to prove himself by going into the human world. Things go horribly wrong and he and Sully end up trapped there, leading to one of Pixar's best and most intense climaxes as they come up with a brilliant, and kinda terrifying, plan to power the door from the other side. In the end, things fall into place as to how they ended up at Monsters, Inc., leading to the events of that movie. One thing I must say before I wrap this up is that the message of this movie is one of the best I've ever seen in any animated movie. "Your dream may not come true, but maybe there's something else for you." That's so deep and ambitious, and it's something other studios would never attempt. (They'd just go on the basic "Protagonist's dream comes true in the end because they really wanted it to" route.) So yeah, I give this movie an A for it's ambition. It didn't need to happen, but at the end of the day, I'm so glad it did.