Monster house

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2017)

In the prequel to Monsters Inc Mike and Sully are students at Monster University but are unlikely to graduate and both cannot stand each other. Sully is too much of a jock whose talent is one scary facial expression and a family name and Mike is not scary enough.
Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren) expels them from the scaring course. That is until Mike comes up with a plan to win the Greek Council Scare Games and thereby his fraternity will be accepted into the College of Scaring.
The plot is a mixture of the failing student needing to pass their tests in order to graduate. Think Billy Madison, Back to school, Revenge of the Nerds and Animal House as Mike and Sully's fraternity are full of nerds and outcasts.
Mike and Sully learn to value each other and recognise the importance of teamwork but the film's message is an uneasy one. Are Pixar saying talent is something you are born with and cannot be acquired?
In various studies it has been show that the US Marines have consistently turned people from a lower working class background, involved in petty crime, having minor drug problems into leaders of men in the battlefield.