Star rating: 4 out of 5

Rating: 8/10 (29 December 2002)

Monsters, Inc. is another triumph of computer animation from the wizards at Pixar. As with the Toy Story series, the plot is taken from a "what if?" scenario in a child's imagination. What if the monsters (whom everybody knows dwell in childrens' closets and under their beds) in fact live in a parallel world to ours?

Monstropolis City is powered by energy garnered from children's screams, which are collected by the workers at Monsters Incorporated. James P. Sullivan and his sarcastic assistant Mike are Monster Inc.'s top scarers, but when Sulley inadvertently lets a small girl into the monster world things start to go awry. Monsters believe that human children are highly toxic, and in their efforts to put little Boo back where she came from, they uncover a fellow worker's sinister plan to revolutionise the scream-collection industry.

One of the few down sides of the film is that at times it is just a little too cute, and Sulley definitely works best as a strong and straight-forward good-guy, as opposed to his attempts to be a moraliser and emotion-analyst. His computer-generated fur though is incredible. Over one million hairs have been animated to move realistically in response to anything from a light breeze to a Himalayan snowstorm.

The concept of a factory that has an exact replica of every child's closet door, and that of monsters living in a world not all that dissimilar to ours is certainly clever; but it is also the little details - such as a "Grossery Store" and "odorant" (rather than deodorant) - which really make the movie. Although the ending is a trifle schmaltzy, this is a film that kids will love, and adults won't mind watching again and again.