Mostly very mediocre, but with a great ending...

Rating: 7/10 (3 July 2013)

I have never watched a film that had quite the effect of lulling me into low expectations, only to snap my mind with a suddenly entertaining twist, as Monsters University. The first 80% or so of the film was pretty much exactly what I expected, i.e. a tired, gimmicky and extremely clichéd presentation that was occasionally broken up by something genuinely funny. But then the film surprised me by getting really good for the last 15 or 20 minutes. That late uptick in quality did not fully atone for how predictable and mediocre the rest of the film was, but it did at least leave me with something interesting to walk away with.
The biggest problem with Monsters University is the university part. It is played for, again, just about every tired cliché imaginable. (Similar to Hotel Transylvania in the early-going prevalence of that.) Some of the gags are just painfully weak. For younger viewers who have not absorbed all of those cultural tropes yet, some of it may be compelling, but for an adult viewer it all seems awfully lazy. And the rah-rah marching band music is just embarrassingly awkward.
There are some great individual elements, of course. A genuinely LOL moment surfaces every once in a while, breaking the predictable monotony. A sequence with monsters racing through underground tunnels while trying to avoid glowing pink sea urchins is a terrific visual concept. The Helen Mirren-voiced dragon/centipede Dean character is a truly inspired (and scary) design. And of course, the plot twists near the end of the film start actually getting exciting. But all of that is somewhat wasted on the whole. If only the producers could have ditched the university angle whilst retaining all of the good elements, maybe it could have been great. As is, it's okay.
Part of the curse of MU is that it has to measure up to its predecessors. Early on, one could depend on a Pixar film to be wonderfully entertaining for everyone, regardless of age. I consider the original Monsters Inc. to be one of the best. But those days when the studio's films were uniformly fresh, deft and uncommonly intelligent seem like an era long gone, now. The animation has kept getting better, but the stories have taken a bit of a nosedive.
At least Monsters University is not as conceptually incoherent as Brave, but on the other hand it makes less of an effort to break new ground. Not a bad film this, and certainly a great choice for the kids, but nothing like what Pixar used to produce. Taken on its own merits, it is a decent but not great film.