MyrPraune

Monsters Inc. was a very innovative movie with a very original premise. Ah the golden days of Pixar! The story, the characters, everything was new and surprising.

Obviously with this prequel the newness is not there anymore; we already know the world of the monsters and some of the characters. The new ones don't really add anything to this universe but are just new variations on the old theme.

The story is relatively cliché, although things turn out a little differently than we would expect for Mike and Sully by the end of the movie. We all know what college/university movies are going to show us, and what's the story line in underdogs movies. But in this movie, I must say there's an undercurrent or realism that's pretty interesting, in the way the story deals with the transformation of its main protagonists.

The characters of Mike and Sully start off as big stereotypes, but they get more subtle as the story progresses. I also liked the way the character of the "mean teacher" was approached. There was a most welcome balance in the portrayal of a tough teacher that has ultimately good motives, if not a lot of compassion or flexibility.

All in all this movie is not a bad way to spend an evening, although I must say I much preferred the first one. But it's definitely not as bad as Cars 2 was.

The subject of the movie is what drew me to it. Very interesting bit of history. If you're into arts, you'll certainly be doing like me throughout the movie, it's like a treasure hunt: Rembrandt here, Van Dyke or Renoir there... That part is really fun. The acting is pretty good in general. The costumes and sets are looking good and realistic. The problem is: against such a backdrop as WWII, where so many people died and such atrocities happened, I couldn't help but wonder, like one character in the movie, if it was worth it to send men to die for pieces of art, be they signed by Rodin or Picasso. This defuses the drama of the movie, although there are a couple of good scenes that will stick to you more. But it's hard to really care in depth about pieces of canvas and marble when you know there were human beings suffering unspeakable things right at the same time. I *have* to set the record straight about Matt Damon's character's awful French speaking "abilities"...! Somehow his horrendous pronunciation is excused by the fact that he supposedly learnt French in Montreal. Excuse me! I'm Québécoise myself and I could not understand one blessed word he was saying when speaking "French". All it was, was really, really bad pronunciation by and English speaking tongue that revolts itself against anything remotely french-sounding. And by the way, Cate Blanchett was not convincing either as a "French" woman. Why not use wonderful actresses like Marion Cotillard, or Audrey Tautou, or Carole Bouquet, anybody but somebody who would've sounded convincing in French.