Like "Toy Story," "Monsters, Inc." revises a standby of childhood imagination-in this case, the monster who hides in the closet. According to screenwriters Andrew Stanton and David Gerson, that monster is no nightmare, but rather a diligent employee of Monsters, Incorporated. In a vast factory in Monsteropolis, the closet doors of every child in the world move on a conveyor belt. The belt drops the doors at their assigned stations, where professional "scarers" stand at the ready. Using the doors as portals between the monster world and childrens' bedrooms in the human world, the scarers extract the fuel that Monsteropolis lives on: human screams.
Sulley (John Goodman), an affable hulk with blue fur and purple spots, is the company's top scarer, consistently beating out the arrogant chameleon Randall (Steve Buscemi) on a tally board worthy of David Mamet. Together, Sulley and Randall keep the company afloat; according to crab-like CEO Henry Waternoose, kids just aren't screaming like they used to.
The scream shortage seems like a pregnant metaphor-of what, however, the film doesn't state explicitly. Are kids growing up too fast? Has the world become a scarier place, period? Are closet monsters the least that today's children have to fear? These are poignant possibilities-although I suspect a more immediate cause may be that the monsters, with the exception of Randall, look more adorable than scary.
Following the model of Pixar's previous efforts, directors David Silverman and Pete Docter establish the monsters' world in quick, witty brushstrokes before barreling into the midst of the action. After Sully accidentally lets a human child into Monsteropolis, an extended cat-and-mouse sequence ensues between Sully and the rubber suited storm troopers of the Child Detection Agency (CDA). According to city law, children are lethally toxic for monsters and must be terminated on the spot. When Sulley and his Scare Assistant, Wazowski (Billy Crystal), discover that the little girl is in fact harmless, they smell a conspiracy.
The premise, ingenious as it is, can't match the elegance of the "Toy Story" series. The monsters' problems (children's supposed toxicity, the scream shortage) seem more contrived than the existential angst of Woody and Buzz. The toys of "Toy Story" dreaded abandonment (death) by their owner (God)-a dilemma inextricable from their role as a child's playthings. In comparison, the conspiracy plot of "Monster, Inc." feels tacked on to the monster-child relationship that forms the story's heart.
While it doesn't succeed totally in the Big Picture department, "Monsters, Inc." is packed with more delightfully clever touches than any other movie I've seen this year. The paranoid CDA rings hilariously, painfully true in our anthrax-afflicted times. Randall's ability to blend invisibly into any environment makes him the niftiest villain in the Pixar canon. The animation of Wazowski is astonishingly expressive; critics of "Final Fantasy" who complained that computer animation can't capture emotion should see what the Pixar crew can do with a character who consists, basically, of an eyeball. The little girl, Boo, is the sole human in a movie populated by uncannily human-like creatures; with her pre-verbal babble and toddler's curiosity, Boo becomes the movie's one true creature.
The vocal casting shrewdly builds on the performers' personae. Crystal's fast-talking schtick has never been funnier, especially when Wazowski woos the snake-haired receptionist Celia (perennial sex bomb Jennifer Tilly). Goodman provides the film's moral center; the understated, affecting coda owes much to the paternal relationship that Sulley has developed with Boo throughout the film.
The factory itself, which contains the majority of the action, is finally the most enchanting of the film's creations. The breathtaking climax features a chase through the conveyor belts, as the characters use the closet doors to jump from monster world to human world and back again. Animated features, even subversive ones like "Shrek," typically feature pastoral backdrops. The workplace setting here is a refreshing change, and an appropriate one. In the assembly line maze of "Monsters, Inc.," the filmmakers have found the perfect metaphor for Pixar's own factory of dreams.