Not much here for grown-ups

Rating: 6/10 (3 September 2010)

Coming to this film late (I missed it the first time round) I'm afraid found myself rather underwhelmed. Shorn of the 'wow-look-at-the-fur' novelty rendering factor, what remains is a rather thin piece of slapstick with additional heavy-handed sentiment; the level of humour is distinctly juvenile, epitomised by the 'yellow snow' jokes, and the moral message hammered home with a twenty-foot mallet.
Compared to films like "Wall-E" or "The Incredibles", this has little to offer adult viewers -- the whole lengthy opening sequence revolves around what is basically a single role-reversal concept, that the monsters are in fact terrified of the children they scare, but this idea is worked to death long before we actually start to care about the characters, with resulting tedium. The film picks up in interest later on, but it then descends into a long chase sequence, while I did find the sentimental sequences grated with excessive repetition.
'Mike' is a typical Annoying Disney Sidekick of the type I've never cared for, but the little girl is charming (and her pre-verbal sequences conveyed in what amounts to silent film technique, an interesting precursor to the long wordless introductory sequence of "Up"). Other characters, including Sulley, I found 'all right' but nothing very special.
I suppose I'm unduly disappointed in the film because Pixar have established the boundaries of expectation so high; but this picture is to "The Incredibles" as "Flushed Away" is to "Chicken Run" -- for an Oscar-winning Pixar animation, it was rather more generic and less inspired than I was hoping for.