Ranking Pixar: Number 17

Monsters University stands as one of the most… unique entries on the list. Making a sequel to nearly any Pixar movie is going to be met with some uncertainty. After all, Pixar makes these movies in such a way that they’re typically tightly wrapped packages with all loose ends tied up at the end and not much room for sequel material. They’ve justified some sequels in the past with varying success, but Monsters University is still unusual, even among this group. Of all the Pixar films, this is the only prequel that Pixar has ever made. I mean, if they were to make a sequel to 2001’s Monsters Inc., a prequel was only logical. After all, as I mentioned earlier, Pixar typically ties their movies up tightly, and Monster’s Inc. was no exception. There was really nothing obvious to be done with a sequel. But a prequel did leave some interesting potential on the table.

So, now that Pixar knew what direction they were going in, they had to decide on the specific time frame. Monsters as kids? Teenagers? What? Pixar’s answer was to take the Monsters to college. Not a terrible idea on paper, but unfortunately, Pixar never really… did anything with this concept beyond the obvious.

This is getting back to Pixar occasionally having a problem with taking full advantage of the theme of a movie. The first Monsters movie made excellent use of the fairly unique Monsters World setting. Meanwhile, MU is… just a college movie. It’s a fairly generic college movie that has a skin of the Monsters universe on it. It’s hard to even really say much more about it than that, and I’ve barely talked about it at all. You’ve all seen Animal House; you know what I mean when I say college movie, right? Well, this is a college movie, and that’s unfortunately enough to cover nearly the entire film. I guess being a generic college movie isn’t the worst thing… it’s relatively entertaining for what it is and can mix in a few laughs here and there (as well as some cool visuals; it may just be a skin over a college movie, but it is a very nice skin at least), it’s just a little disappointing given what came before it.

That is, until the final act of the movie. After the misfits take down the jock/preps in the Scare Games, you assume that the movie is winding down into the most generic ending of all: the heroes win. But soon after, it comes out that Sulley cheated in the final round, rigging everything so that Mike would come out on top. The reason that Sulley cheated? He realized that a statement earlier in the movie was right: Mike wasn’t scary, and his dream of being a professional scarer was doomed. Mike then, in an attempt to prove everyone wrong, goes to the human world to scare some real children. Sulley then runs after him to save him, setting this true ending in motion. That entire final act is just pure gold. Given that the rest of the movie felt like Pixar was phoning everything in, I’m extremely relieved that they brought their A game at least for this part of the film. The conversations between characters feel incredibly natural, honest, and really hit close to home in a strange roundabout way. This also leads into a pretty great “action” scene at the end of the movie. The route it took to connect to Monsters Inc. was long and windy, but it came around in the end and managed to, at least at the very end, be worthy enough to be called a true Prequel.

Like I said, on a whole, the movie feels like a generic filler movie, but that last chunk of the movie really is something spectacular. It isn’t enough to save the movie and make it a great Pixar movie, but it definitely makes it memorable at least. Staying out of the trash for my Number 17, Monsters University.