Monsters, Inc. Review

The premise does half the work before a joke lands. Monstropolis runs on screams harvested through closet doors, children are believed to be toxic, and James P. Sullivan is the plant's star employee, which lets Pete Docter play a buddy comedy, a corporate thriller and a parenting story at once. John Goodman plays Sulley as a gentle lineman, and Billy Crystal, who had turned down Buzz Lightyear, fires off Mike Wazowski's patter without a slack moment. Boo was voiced by Mary Gibbs, a story artist's daughter so young that the crew followed her around the office with a microphone, and her babble is funnier than most written lines.

Technically it was a leap. Pixar wrote a simulation tool for Sulley's fur, more than two million hairs, and used it again for Boo's clothes, and the door vault chase needed more rendering power than all the studio's earlier films combined. The villain plot is the ordinary part, a conspiracy that surfaces exactly when the structure needs one.

Randy Newman finally won an Oscar, after fifteen losing nominations, for If I Didn't Have You, and the film lost the first Best Animated Feature award to Shrek. The last shot, one door and one word, is among the best endings Pixar has made.