Monsters, Inc.


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Monsters, Inc.

Monsters, Inc. movie poster
Directed by Peter Docter
Lee Unkrich
David Silverman
Produced by Darla Anderson
John Lasseter
Written by Story:
Jill Culton
Peter Docter
Ralph Eggleston
Jeff Pidgeon
Screenplay:
Andrew Stanton
Daniel Gerson
Additional Screenplay:
Robert L. Baird
Rhett Reese
Jonathan Roberts
Starring John Goodman
Billy Crystal
Steve Buscemi
James Coburn
Jennifer Tilly
Music by Randy Newman
Distributed by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
Release date(s) November 2, 2001
Running time 94 min.
Language English
Budget $115 million
Gross revenue Domestic: $255,873,250
Worldwide: $525,366,597

Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 computer animated comedy film and the fourth feature-length film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. The film was released to theaters by Walt Disney Pictures in the United States on November 2, 2001, in Australia on December 26, 2001, and in the United Kingdom on February 8, 2002. Monsters, Inc. was written by Jack W. Bunting, Jill Culton, Peter Docter, Ralph Eggleston, Dan Gerson, Jeff Pidgeon, Rhett Reese, Jonathan Roberts and Andrew Stanton. It was directed by Pete Docter, Lee Unkrich, and David Silverman. [1]

Monsters, Inc. premiered in the United States on October 28, 2001, and went into general release on November 2, 2001 and was a commercial and critical success, grossing over $525,366,597 worldwide.[2] Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes also reported extremely positive reviews with a fresh 95% approval rating.[3]

This film was rated G by the MPAA.

Contents

Plot

The story is set in Monstropolis, a 1930s retro city inhabited by monsters, and centers around Monsters, Inc., the city's power company. Monsters, Inc. sends its employees to human children's bedrooms to scare the children, through teleportation doors set up on the work floor. The screams of children generate electric power for the city. However, the monsters believe that children themselves are toxic, and go to great lengths to prevent contact; should a monster be touched by a child or their belongings, the Child Detection Agency (CDA) is called to sanitize the affected being. With increasing numbers of children becoming desensitized to scary things, Monsters, Inc. is finding it difficult to continue to meet the power demands of the city.

One day, James P. Sullivan ("Sulley"), Monsters, Inc.'s top scarer, finds a door on the work floor after hours in violation of policy. Peering inside, he finds the child's room empty. Sulley hides when he hears Randall Boggs, a competitive co-worker, enter the work floor and returns the door back to the company's door vault. Sulley prepares to leave but finds that a human girl has followed him through the door, thinking him to be a giant kitty. Sulley quickly hides the child and gets hold of Mike Wazowski, his co-worker and lifelong friend, to figure out the situation. Together at Sulley's home, they discover that being touched by the child is not harmful at all, and that when she laughs, the power surges to incredible levels, almost causing them to be detected by the CDA. Sulley nicknames the child "Boo" and becomes her caretaker until they can get her back home.

Sulley and Mike disguise Boo as a monster and return to Monsters, Inc. the next day. As Mike attempts to get the right door to return Boo, Boo wanders off into the plant, with Sulley giving chase. They accidentally stumble upon Randall and his "scream extractor", a device that takes the screams directly from a child, which requires Randall to actually kidnap the child from their room and bring to the extractor. Sulley takes Boo and attempts to tell Monsters, Inc.'s CEO, Herny J. Waternoose, about Randall, but is forced to demonstrate his scaring skills to new employees before he can do so. When he scares the robot subject, Boo becomes frightened of him, and reveals herself as a human. Sulley tries to explain the situation to Waternoose, but comes to realize that Waternoose actually conceived the whole plan as to keep Monsters, Inc. a profitable business. To keep them quiet, Waternoose orders Sulley and Mike exiled to the Himalayas, and gives Boo to Randall to extract her screams.

Sulley and Mike, after a brief falling out, realize that Boo's life is in danger, and find a nearby village where they locate a door connected to the work floor. They are just in time to save Boo from the extractor, and attempt to catch Randall, eventually leading to a chase on and through the millions of doors in the door vault. They eventually capture Randall and push him through a door, and then smash the door to pieces to prevent him returning through it. Sulley, Mike, and Boo then lure Waternoose into a trap, forcing him to reveal his plan while they were recording it as to present the information to the CDA. Waternoose is taken away, but the CDA insists that Boo must return to her world. Sulley and Mike say goodbye to Boo, and watch as the CDA put her door through a wood chipper, reducing it to splinters, one which Sulley holds onto as a keepsake.

Sometime later, Sulley has become the CEO of Monsters, Inc., and has changed their approach: instead of scaring children, they make them laugh, which generates significantly more energy, making all the employees happy. Mike reveals a special project to Sulley: he has managed to rebuild Boo's door save the one piece Sulley kept, and invites him to finish it. Sulley places the last piece and enters the door, where Boo instantly recognizes him, much to Sulley's happiness.

At the end, several comical "outtakes" are shown where the movie's characters are portrayed as actors on an actual set. There is also a low-budget musical put on for the employees based on Mike's lie of actually producing a play to cover up the fact that they were looking for Boo in the factory earlier in the movie; the musical is a dramatized retelling of the film's events with several employees replaying the roles they had in "real life" (excluding Randall, who is presumably still trapped in the human world, his role filled by one of the janitors). These are also available as bonus features of the DVD.

Voice cast

Main article: List of Monsters, Inc. characters

References to other Pixar films

Main article: List of Pixar film references

Recurring Gags

  • Excited and frightened Monsters making claims of the supernatural powers a child possesses are much like alien abduction stories humans report to the media.
  • Roz bringing up Mike's paperwork upon each confrontation with her.
  • "2319!" The gag used 3 times on one monster, and once on a CDA worker involving contamination by contact with a human child's possessions and the cataclysmic and excessive methods of cleaning the contamination and its immediate area. The term 2319 refers to the twenty third and nineteenth letters of the alphabet. W and S respectively, and relate directly to the offending article of the child's clothing. Namely a White Sock.
  • Mike's shadowing of Sulley's success, (ie his face is covered on the television commercial or hindered by a barcode on a magazine cover next to him) and his subsequent excitement that despite this he still has a piece of the spotlight.

Trivia

Pixar owner Steve Jobs' 'other career' as CEO of Apple, Inc. (then Apple Computer, Inc.) is alluded to in one scene, where the back page of Mike's magazine shows a Macintosh PowerBook ad with the tagline, 'Scare Different' (a reference to Apple's infamous Chiat/Day devised 'Think Different' campaign).

Other media

Manga

  • A manga version of Monsters, Inc. was made by Hiromi Yamafuji and distributed in Kodansha's Comic Bon Bon magazine in Japan; the manga was published in English by TOKYOPOP until it became out of print.

On ice

  • Feld Entertainment currently tours a Monsters, Inc. edition of their Disney on Ice skating tour.

Video games

  • A series of video games, and a multi-platform video game were created, based on the movie.

Monsters, Inc. Quiz Game

Cast

Playables

Math Game the playable is Sullivan. Quiz Game the playable is Mike and Boo.

Additional short film

  • A short was made by Pixar in 2002 named Mike's New Car, in which the two main characters have assorted misadventures with a car Mike has just bought. This film was not screened in theaters, but is included with the DVD release of Monsters, Inc.

Theme park attractions

Monsters, Inc. has inspired three attractions at Disney theme parks across the globe.

Music

For details, see Monsters, Inc. (soundtrack).

The score was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score and the song "If I Didn't Have You" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Awards

Trailers

One Pixar tradition is to create trailers for their films that do not contain footage from the released film. Trailers for this film include:

  • Sulley and Mike stumble into the wrong bedroom. Sulley blames Mike for the mistake, and the two have a fight, which is quickly resolved.
  • In a trailer shown before the first Harry Potter film, Sulley is shown playing charades with Mike, but Mike is unable to guess the phrase "Harry Potter". The clip never specifically mentions Harry Potter, but the end states that Monsters, Inc. is playing right next door. Afterwards, Mike attempts to charade by waving his arms in the air to make a star shape. A bored Sulley quickly and correctly guesses Star Wars. A bewildered Mike asks how he does it. A different version has Mike using a hula hoop, and Sulley correctly guesses Saturn.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Monster's Inc. Writing Credits". IMDb. Retrieved on 2008-07-09.
  2. ^ "Box Office Mojo - Monsters, Inc.". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on 2008-07-09.
  3. ^ "Rotten Tomatoes - Monsters, Inc.". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 2008-07-09.
  4. ^ "DURING 'YEAR OF A MILLION DREAMS' CELEBRATION DISNEY CAST MEMBERS TO AWARD A MILLION MAGICAL DREAMS". The Walt Disney Company (2006-06-07). Retrieved on 2008-08-28.

External links

Wikiquote
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Preceded by
Toy Story 2		 Pixar Animation Studios feature films
2001		 Succeeded by
Finding Nemo
v • d • e
Monsters, Inc.
Characters
Production
Peter Docter (director/writer) · Lee Unkrich (director) · David Silverman (director) · John Lasseter (producer) · Darla Anderson (producer) · Andrew Stanton (screenplay) · Randy Newman (music)
Voice artists
Media
Attractions
Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue! (opened 2006) · Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor (opened 2007) · Monsters, Inc.: Ride and Go Seek (due to open in 2009)
Related articles
v • d • e
Pixar Animation Studios
Feature films
Toy Story (1995) · A Bug's Life (1998) · Toy Story 2 (1999) · Monsters, Inc. (2001) · Finding Nemo (2003) · The Incredibles (2004) · Cars (2006) · Ratatouille (2007) · WALL-E (2008) · Up (2009) · Toy Story 3 (2010) · Cars 2 (2011) · The Bear and the Bow (2011) · Newt (2012)
Short films
Luxo Jr. (1986) · Red's Dream (1987) · Tin Toy (1988) · Knick Knack (1989) · Geri's Game (1997) · For the Birds (2000) · Mike's New Car (2002) · Boundin' (2003) · Jack-Jack Attack (2005) · One Man Band (2006) · Mater and the Ghostlight (2006) · Lifted (2006) · Your Friend the Rat (2007) · Presto (2008) · BURN-E (2008)
TV Shorts Series
Cars Toons (2008)
Compilations
Documentaries
Products
Related works
People
See also






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