The monsters in Monsters, Inc. are just so incredibly cute--and they know it. Whereas Woody, Buzz and pals in the Toy Story saga were filled with self-doubt about just how much the children in their lives would continue to love them, here our heroic monsters and their impossibly lovable human ward Boo have no such worries, at least when it comes to the cinema audience. And that's why Monsters, Inc., for all its wondrous computer-animated artistry, its smart humour and its family-friendly appeal, doesn't quite capture the naïve charm of its predecessors. Nevertheless, John Goodman and Billy Crystal, as scare-champions Sulley and Mike, are a great double-act whose comedy never goes over kids' heads but still reaches up to make their parents laugh. The film's central conceit--that monsters in the bedroom closet are just doing a night's work in order to generate power from screams for the city of Monstropolis--is funny and cleverly worked out; and kids will of course love the fact that the monsters are mortally afraid of the very children they are trying to frighten.
The animation is extraordinarily detailed (Sulley's fur is a marvel in itself) and the set-piece action sequences top anything that has gone before for sheer audaciousness. But overall Pixar play things very safe, from the hissable villain to the end credit "outtakes". A bolder film might have taken inspiration from The Nightmare Before Christmas; instead, a little of that Disney disease of knowing cuteness seems to have crept into the formula. --Mark Walker