The movie opens with one of the main characters from the first movie Mike Wazowski as the cutest little kid ever, and look at the gif I found of him above good luck reading this blog without being creeped out with the knowledge that he's WATCHING YOU! Anyway being cute isn't exactly a good thing when your a fucking monster so he gets picked on a lot. My favorite scene of him as a child is at one point they're picking buddies for a field trip to Monsters Inc. but nobody acknowledges Mike. He asks another monster if he wants to be partners but he doesn't seem to recognize Mike. Mike says, "Come on we carpooled here." Still nothing so then Mike adds, "We're cousins!" After all that Mike ends up partnered with the teacher, with whom he is on a first name basis, and they are off to the scare floor. Mike manages to sneak into one of the doors linked to the human world and watches one of the best scarers scare a child. The scarer was so impressed that he didn't see or hear Mike that he gave him his MU baseball cap and Mike was so impressed by his performance that he was inspired to become a scarer.
This brings us to our title setting Monsters University. We jump forward ten years or so and see Mike Wazowski once again stepping off a bus, this time as a college student. First thing Mike does after checking in and all that is go and meet his roommate. Now I know what you're thinking, his roommate is going to be Sully and they're going to be fast friends roll credits. Well you're wrong losers! M. Night Sheldon must have been a writer on this because get ready for a twist. His roommate is actually Randall, the villain from the first movie. Sully doesn't show up until they get to scaring class where he is a hands down favorite due to his Sullivan family legacy. Also he's really big and scary where as Mike is more small and cute which causes them to butt heads when Mike begins to get better grades. Mike is always studying with the help of Randal and Sully is more of a slacker who believes he shouldn't have to work to be the best because that's what he has always been told. Finally the final exam rolls around and the stakes are high because if a monster fails they are out of the scare program altogether. Of course due to Mike and Sully's constant fighting, they both fail the exam and are forced to leave the scare program. However, there may be another way in.
Every year at Monsters U an event is held called the scare games. Any fraternity or sorority that enters the scare games will face a series of challenges where the last place team will be eliminated until only one team remains. The reason this is important is because the dean was so certain that Mike and Sully would lose that she promised their entire team a spot in the scare program if they won. Mike and Sully got a spot on the only fraternity that would accept them, Oozema-Kappa, the worst fraternity on campus. Let's take a moment to talk about Mike and Sully's frat brothers. First up we have Don Carlton, a father figure to the group who is now basically a professional student, also he's in sales and a tentacle monster. Second and third is Terry and Terri Perry, a two headed creature in which one of them wants to be a dancer and the other couldn't care less so it leads to some awkward situations. Next up is Art, a purple fuzzy archway who was in prison at some point. And finally, the piece de resistance, Squishy. Squishy is this light pink, jelly monster that can go from adorable sidekick to the stuff of nightmares in a matter of seconds and he steals the movie.
Now at this point in the movie I know what you're thinking, this team of misfits has to learn how to get along to overcome the obstacles. Well you're pretty much right. There's a montage of challenges showing them all growing closer as friends and as a team. What is interesting though is that they don't actually win. In the last competition, Sully cheats because he doesn't think Mike is scary enough and wins it for the other team. When Sully confesses to Mike, it prompts Mike to go through a door to the human world to prove that he is scary. The only problem is he isn't scary. It turns out the door led to a cabin on a campground full of children who monsters believe to be toxic. When Mike tries to scare them away they laugh at him and imitate him because he's just so cute, I mean just scroll up and look at that gif, he's so cute!
Anyway Sully feels responsible so he forces his way through the door to find Mike. He comes out to find all the humans outside the cabin talking to the police but no Mike in sight. However the window is open so Sully follows a path to where he finds Mike sitting at a lake feeling down. They share a heart to heart because Mike can never be the scarer he always wanted to be and Sully doesn't feel like he'll ever get out of his father's shadow. After they bond for a moment they return to the cabin to find that the door to the other side has been turned off for the safety of the monsters. Mike realizes that if they scare the people enough, they can power the door from this side because if you saw Monsters Inc. you know that screams in the human world are energy in the monster world. So Mike and Sully wait for the police to come in and investigate and then they begin. By using fishing line, hiding in the rafters, Sully picking up and dropping Mike and the big Sully monster reveal they set a genuinely terrifying scene. The door on the monster side of the world exploded and revealed Mike and Sully safely back home. Unfortunately, because of the damage caused they were expelled, the rest of Oozema-kappa was re-inducted into the scare program because of their impressive performance in the scare games. Mike and Sully instead get a job at the mail room of Monsters Inc. and work their way up to scarers where the movie ends.
This movie had some truly great elements to it. In Monsters Inc. the human character Boo was a big part of the story so in Monsters U it seemed like they intentionally stayed out of the human realm as much as possible to explore more of the monster realm. Whenever they were in the human world they didn't clearly show any one person's face. It was as if they weren't even characters just set pieces and it was a good way of separating itself from Monster's Inc. The one criticism I really have with this movie is that all of Sully's characterization and growth comes from the fact that he wants to prove something to his father, a character who is never in the movie. It's like going to a party and hearing about that one really cool guy who couldn't make it to the party, and then you hear all those great stories about that guy and then you notice that your girlfriend couldn't make it and then you hear some guy say that the reason that cool guy couldn't make it is because he's nailing some skank in the back of his van and DAMN IT SHARON!
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