Not much new to chew on here.

Rating: 5/10 (10 November 2001)

I have been heard to mention my anticipation of this title in recent weeks. Now that I have finally got my peepers on it, I have to say that it wasn't really my cup of tea. I have a three-year-old son who is difficult to please as far as his entertainment is concerned and, suffice to say, he lost interest in this within half an hour. He adores Toy Story 2 and Tarzan, and can watch them (and has) repeatedly. The fear that a large proportion of ticket-buyers have come to view the now obligatory Attack Of The Clones' trailer is well founded it seemed, with large numbers of the audience leaving before the commencement of the movie. This may account for it's auspicious first weekend record-breaking figures. Anyhow, Star Wars aside. Monsters Inc is very pretty, very cute, very Disney, very Pixar. I first heard about it after buying the Tigger Movie DVD for my son. It seemed quite brilliant at the time, what little I gleaned from the all too brief trailer. I won't ruin the plot for you, but it is basically Toy Story with different characters. Instead of toys that secretly lead a life away from their owners, we now have monsters that are thought of as figments of the child's imaginings. They survive off the screams of children and around the clock they sneak through children's closet, and scare the bejeezus out of them. (Some have more success than others) Billy Crystal and John Goodman are excellent as the main protagonists but the rest of the characters are second rate and fail to inspire any feeling about them. There is a scene reminiscent of Toy Story 2 (Sorry to harp back to this again, it is difficult not to when both films or so similar) when Woody and the gang are trying to save Jessie at the Airport, jumping from suitcase to suitcase. This time we have a countless collection of doors which are used to enter the bedroom of the children the monsters scare, thousands of them hanging from conveyors. This makes for an entertaining chase, but it's been done before, as has most of the movie really. Perhaps some insight from Nick Park or the rest of Aardman Animation would be of some benefit, as their films are quite astonishing in their originality and timing. A picture that is immense fun, but as a wisened old Disney buff, I feel it is more of the same immense fun that we have seen many times before.