Beautiful, but Soulless (6/10)

Rating: 6/10 (13 January 2002)

(I saw this in the theater, YMMV)
Let's start with what makes this movie stand out from the crowd -- Pixar's rendering of the big blue furry monster, Sulley. I am in complete awe of what Pixar has accomplished with rendering Sulley. My mouth fell open and my head spun during a scene where Sulley is lying on the ground in a snowstorm. Lying in the snow with all of his fur waving in the wind and the snowflakes flying by and getting caught in his fur. Spectacular. Amazing. Probably took months of the entire processing power of every computer on the west coast to render that scene.
Other than that, there ain't much else to recommend this movie. I didn't care one whit about any of the characters in this movie. None of them, not even Boo, the little girl. She was soooo precious and soooo fearless that she was completely unbelievable. In addition, there is seemingly a new rule mandating the use of a rollercoaster-like scene in every computer animated movie. If you like that kind of stuff, you won't be disappointed. The rollercoaster-like scene in Monsters, Inc. seems to go on forever, and starts to feel like just another gimmick to show off how smart those programmers are.
Monsters, Inc. is a wonderful demonstration for the technical wizardry at Pixar, but it just never quite makes it as a movie.