Monsters, Inc. is the local power company, and their top employees pass through space portals to enter the bedrooms of sleeping children. There, they frighten the children, and the resulting screams are somehow bottled (never mind the science behind all this, it's just a 'G' rated cartoon). The monsters then return via the portals to Monstropolis, where they briefly bask in glory while their assistant sets up the next portal.
The perpetual employee-of-the-month is Sulley (John Goodman), a big blue Yeti-type. His talkative best friend/sidekick/assistant is Wazowski (Billy Crystal), a giant eyeball with slender attached limbs. Sulley's rival is Randall (Steve Buscemi), a treacherous and ambitious chameleon. Their boss is Waternoose (James Coburn), a venerable multi-legged crustacean. Wazowski has the hots for airhead receptionist Celia (Jennifer Tilly), a squid-like woman with snakes for hair, but quality time with her is endangered because of his strict raspy-voiced shift boss, Roz (Bob Peterson).
To make a long story short, Randall, in cahoots with Waternoose, plans to kidnap a human toddler (Mary Gibbs), and torture her with a scream-sucking device that will save the city and factory at the toddler's expense. Sulley inadvertently foils Randall's plans by accidentally adopting the toddler. This leads to a series of confrontations between Sulley and Randall, with the future of the toddler at stake.
How others will see it. Monsters, Inc. continued the long line of Pixar commercial and critical successes. The film received four Academy Awards, winning for a feel-good Randy Newman song, but losing in the category of Best Animated Feature to Shrek.
The imdb.com user ratings are very high, dropping only marginally with advancing age. The movie currently lurks in the bottom reaches of the imdb.com Top 250.
No one, then or now, seems concerned that the plot is as suspect as it is imaginative. Some fret that the film is sexist because Celia is on the shallow, selfish, and stupid side. She's also funny, and therefore all is forgiven. Certainly, I prefer her to the commonplace female lead as a sexy heroine who kicks butt and is incorruptible and/or untamable. Life is not a Laura Croft video game, in the same way that it is not like Rambo II. We did lose the Vietnam War.
How I felt about it. But I digress. I have my share of pet peeves with this film. 'G' rated films should not depict their lead character nearly strangled to death, nor show toddler girls strapped down while the villain steers a humongous scream-sucking machine into their face. Billy Crystal is a great guy, I am sure, but I have never found him funny. W.C. Fields was funny. Charlie Chaplin was funny. Groucho Marx was funny, often, and so was Jack Benny. Sorry, Bob Hope, you were never funny. Even less so than Billy Crystal.
I think the problems with this movie have much to do with the 'G' rating. It limits where they story can go. It can't get very scary, and the ending must be happy. The sad moments aren't there, either, and perhaps those are what helps bring such quality to the Pixar Toy Story movies.
What we do get is how'd-you-like-me Vaudeville-style charm from Goodman and (especially) Crystal. There's a lot of frantic movement, and plenty of purportedly heartwarming parent-child bonding between Sulley, the big monster with a big heart of gold, and Mary, the child who never strays from adorable. Sometimes we wish that Sulley was more like the Grinch, and that Mary was a brat. Perhaps this brings me full circle to why I like Celia. There's something selfish, shallow, and stupid in all of us.