Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #269 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-09-07
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Dubbed, Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
• Dubbed in: German
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 88 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
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

DVD Description
DVD Special Features:
All-new animated short film, Mike's New Car (exclusive to video and DVD).
For The Birds - 2001 Academy Award-Winner for Best Animated Short Film.
Finding Nemo - an exclusive sneak peek of Disney/Pixar's next feature film release.
Hilarious outtakes and Company Play.
Never-before-seen deleted scenes.
Disney Storytime.
Peek-A-Boo: Boo's Door Game.

Aspect ratio: Fullscreen (4:3)
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1; Dolby Stereo

Synopsis
Intelligent, funny, adorable, and beautifully animated, MONSTERS, INC. will delight fans of SHREK and TOY STORY, while drawing a new audience of curious, kid-friendly viewers. Billy Crystal and John Goodman make a fiercely funny comedic team as job partners and best friends, Mike (Crystal)--a little green guy with one huge eyeball, and Sulley (Goodman)--a big purple and blue fuzzy guy with dinosaur spikes down his back. Mike and Sully work at MONSTERS, INC., a gigantic corporation that captures the screams of little children and turns them into energy. To make the children scream, the monsters must enter each child's bedroom through the closet door, then deliver a frightening affront. The only problem is, kids aren't scared anymore. And because of this problem, Monsters, Inc. is in a jam. But when one little girl, Boo (Mary Gibbs), follows Sully through her closet door and into the factory, she brings an even more dire issue to the fore: the monsters are actually terrified of children. From Pixar Animation Studios, MONSTERS, INC. is an exciting adventure with a sweet, happy ending.

Customer Reviews

Imagination runs riot
What a treat. The Monsters and the energetic little toddler, Boo, are not just cute, they're great personalities too - and so well animated. The film's entertaining from start to finish and a couple of the extras are as good as the film, in their own short way. Some of the good things on this DVD:

• A wonderful story. The world of the monsters runs on the power of screams that the monsters have to generate by scaring human children. They have a whole industry dedicated to extracting these blood-curdling shrieks from the poor, terrified little kids. Each child is matched with its ideal monster and their monster passes from the power factory in Monstropolis through one of thousands of bedroom closet doors - one for each child - into the child's bedroom where it carries out its job and the resulting scream is captured in a flask. The monsters have to be very careful though because they believe that children are highly toxic and can kill them with a touch. The monsters are actually tremendously alarmed at the prospect of contact with a human child. If only the children knew ....

• Excellent characters. The main ones are outstanding. The little girl, Boo is too cute to mention. Sulley (big, woolly, top scoring scarer) and Mike (small, walking eyeball and Sulley's best friend and assistant) have all the usual concerns of the average working man and they're also funny. Mike has a girl friend (she may be my favourite). She has one eye and snakes for hair. When she gets romantic with Mike, her snakes get all romantic with him too. When she gets angry with Mike, they all rattle their tails and glare and hiss. Those animators must have been inspired. What a clever idea. Randle, Boo's special monster - the one that really scares her - moves like a centipede. He's a real villain with a wicked plot go maximise scream power.

• Brilliant extras. In particular two short animated films: "For the Birds" and "Mike's New Car". I've watched them more times than I've watched the main film. Both are very funny. I've found that I can't even think about "For the Birds" without starting to laugh. There's one scene in the film where several of the small, quarrelsome birds are taking the Mickey out of the big, friendly bird - pulling faces and bristling their feathers. You'll need to see it to believe how funny this is.

I recommend this DVD. It'll be played over and over again.

"Come on! We've gotta find another door!"
Monsters, Inc. is another triumph of computer animation from the wizards at Pixar. As with the Toy Story series, the plot is taken from a "what if?" scenario in a child's imagination. What if the monsters (whom everybody knows dwell in childrens' closets and under their beds) in fact live in a parallel world to ours?

Monstropolis City is powered by energy garnered from children's screams, which are collected by the workers at Monsters Incorporated. James P. Sullivan and his sarcastic assistant Mike are Monster Inc.'s top scarers, but when Sulley inadvertently lets a small girl into the monster world things start to go awry. Monsters believe that human children are highly toxic, and in their efforts to put little Boo back where she came from, they uncover a fellow worker's sinister plan to revolutionise the scream-collection industry.

One of the few down sides of the film is that at times it is just a little too cute, and Sulley definitely works best as a strong and straight-forward good-guy, as opposed to his attempts to be a moraliser and emotion-analyst. His computer-generated fur though is incredible. Over one million hairs have been animated to move realistically in response to anything from a light breeze to a Himalayan snowstorm.

The concept of a factory that has an exact replica of every child's closet door, and that of monsters living in a world not all that dissimilar to ours is certainly clever; but it is also the little details - such as a "Grossery Store" and "odorant" (rather than deodorant) - which really make the movie. Although the ending is a trifle schmaltzy, this is a film that kids will love, and adults won't mind watching again and again.

Funny, Charming--and those Amazing Graphics!
Just saw MONSTERS INC. for the first time, and although I wasn't looking forward to some of the cutsy schmaltz that sometimes overly pervades certain Disney films, the entrancing--and vivid--computer animation totally sucked me in, so much that I soon couldn't care less about whatever corny little story the screenwriters were trying to make me believe.

However, a funny thing happened during my ongoing visual and aural animation: I actually started caring about the story, about the characters created only from photons and actors' voices--as well as from a screenplay that is completely inoffensive to little ears, yet also listenable to bigger ones. And the graphics--wow! At times I found myself forgetting that this wasn't live-action, especially during what I felt was the best scene, one that reminded me of a wicked inverted-rollercoaster ride.

Well, there you have it: a film that everyone from five and up can enjoy, for different aspects of it. Aside from the wonderful visuals, of course we also get two of the best vocal acting performances in recent memory, from Billy Crystal and John Goodman. Yes, we also get some of those patented Disney/Pixar fake 'outtakes' during the closing credits (I know they're a bit corny by now, but they're still kind of cute). With all of the extras on the DVD, I'd say it's a good buy--whether you have a kid or not. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED