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by Jennifer Alpeche Published: October 2, 2002
Disc One As the fourth feature film from Pixar Animation Studios, “Monsters, Inc.” continues to explore childhood. Allowing us to revisit a time when a favorite toy was replaced by a newer, shinier one -- only to find that the older one remained in our hearts. A time when we asked for a night-light to illuminate our rooms and keep the darkness and monsters away. Pixar takes memories such as these and offers a new spin, telling the same stories in new and exciting ways, complemented of course by gorgeous computer animation. They take us to a new world: a toy world, a bug world, a monster world. In “Monsters, Inc.,” the subject is as you might expect, monsters and how they live in closets to scare us at night. Children the world over have experienced this fear, for where there’s a closet, there could be a monster. But director Pete Docter and his think team -- co-directors David Silverman and Lee Unkrich, executive producer John Lasseter ("Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2” ), screenwriter Andrew Stanton, and story supervisor Bob Peterson -- took the idea of monsters living in our closets and turned our attention to the monsters themselves. They chose not to focus on the fear, but the feared. You see what we've never realized is that monsters are more afraid of children than children are of monsters. As told in "Monster's, Inc.," the only reason why monsters scare at all is because children’s screams are used as fuel, as engery. The entire monster world relies on the production of screams. It’s employment. It’s community. Monsters, Inc. is everything to Monstropolis. And as its motto says: We scare because we care. What a concept. The Production Tour, as well as in the feature-length commentary, tells us that story is the most important element in Pixar films. The animation -- an amazing combination of imagination and technical achievement -- is not as impressive without the all-important story, which provides the platform from which it soars. The strength, the foundation of all Pixar films begins with a worthy story. And “Monsters, Inc.” offers a charming one, telling the tale of top scarer, Sulley (John Goodman), his scare assistant and best friend, Mike (Billy Crystal), and the little girl “Boo” (Mary Gibbs), who accidentally steps through to the monster world, creating a crisis in Monstropolis comparable to a nuclear-plant leak in our own world. She is perceived as dangerous and hazardous and must be contained. But Sulley, with his big, loveable heart, comes to care for Boo as a parent and together with Mike, does everything he can to protect her from the C.D.A. (Child Detection Agency), an ambitious scarer named Randall (Steve Buscemi), and any other harm. His only wish is to see her safely returned to the human world. Disc Two: Supplemental Material Featuring a score by Pixar’s favorite composer, Randy Newman, and a terrific cast of voices, “Monsters, Inc.” comes to life as a wonderful 90 minutes of fun, smiles and aws. In addition to this, the two-disc DVD set offers a lot more, including a great feature-length commentary with Pete Docter, John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich, and Andrew Stanton, as well as a sound effects-only track which celebrates the work of the sound team. Story, artwork, sound, design, mixing -- every detail in “Monsters, Inc.” was carefully atteneded to. The objective was to create a reality, to make this world of monsters real. Disc Two features over three hours of extras, including special featurettes created for Humans Only and Monsters Only, outtakes, animated shorts, and a few surprises found hiding behind colorful, closed doors. It took some time for this to really sink in, but everything in “Monsters, Inc.” was built. When I think of animation, I think of beautiful drawings that poof, come to life. But the computer animation used in films such as “Monsters, Inc.” is wholly different. A car must be built. A set must be built. The characters must be rendered completely, down to the smallest detail. In the commentary, Pete Docter and his crew talk about the cost of building a location, of improvising with an existing set to save money. And as we see in the location flyarounds and in the monster files, the monster world and the characters that inhabit it are indeed real. When the camera takes us through Downtown Monstropolis, Mike and Sulley’s apartment or the amazing door vault of Monsters, Inc., we see that these are real three-dimensional buildings. There’s texture to them, created by design, shading and lighting. The best thing about the DVD’s supplemental material is that it opens us up to the world of “Monsters, Inc.” -- revealing secrets that only enhance the viewing experience. Two doors locked into place. One is marked Humans Only. The other Monsters Only. Select the “Humans Only” door and away we go. The door is lifted up onto the track, which takes us into the door vault where it hooks up with seven other doors labeled Pixar, Story, Monster Files, Design, Animation, Music and Sound, Release, and Production Tour. Each door leads to bells and whistles, such as the original treatment of "Monster's, Inc" under Story. Here, accompanied by storyboard drawings and great narration, we find a 14-minute version of what the film could have been. And this is only one of many extras to enjoy, including art galleries featuring hundreds of original and in-progress drawings of characters and locations, a guide to the “in” jokes found in the film, a split-screen storyboard comparison, outtakes, trailers, TV spots, a multi-language clip reel comprised of 13 different languages, and a special section of “set dressing,” which shows how empty sets and locations are with a click, dressed up with props. The production tour includes short featurettes taken from each of the individual doors. Pixar Animation Studios is without a doubt, an amazing place to work. Fun and creativity course through the studio on push scooters, but as John Lasseter points out, the teams also work extremely hard to produce these films and shorts. The next feature from Pixar, "Finding Nemo" is given a sneak peek on Disc One, as Pixar takes its vision under the sea. The “Monsters Only” side was created for the kiddies -- though adults will surely enjoy it as well. There are three sections to explore titled New Monster Adventures, Behind the Screams, and Orientation. Some of these featurettes are interactive, such as “Peek-A-Boo: Boo’s Door Game” and a special made for the Japanese kids’ show, “Ponkickies 21.” Under “Orientation,” we get to enter Monsters, Inc. as workers. We get a tour of the facility, plus an insider’s look at the employee handbook, complete with “scarer cards” -- trading cards for kids featuring lead characters, such as Sulley, Mike, Randall, and Henry J. Waternose. To return to the main menu, we also find outtakes, the created-for-DVD short, ”Mike’s New Car,” (with optional commentary by “Docter and Gould”) and the winner of the 2001 Academy Award for Best-animated Short, ”For the Birds” (with optional commentary by director Ralph Eggleston). The outtakes can actually be found in three different sections of the DVD and like the rest of this set, they are funny and clever. As a bonus, we get a special look at Mike’s play, “Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me.” Thankfully, the DVD is packed with these extras to help convey the time and heart put into making this film. An idea that originated before the first Pixar feature was released, "Monsters, Inc." was the story that would not go away. Overall rating: B+ for the film, A+ for the DVD. |
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