'Monsters University' --A Review

Tons of movies have tried to be Animal House.   That classic of college excess and frat life seems to have spawned a whole sub-genre of what you could call 'the college movie' in the decades hence and few, if any have succeeded in matching the progenitor of it all.  Some have come close:  PCU, Old School and Van Wilder, to name a few.   Others, like Accepted, are interesting but most of them just, well, suck out loud.

It is, therefore, a testament to the magic of Pixar that of all the films that have attempted to recapture the lightning in the bottle that was Animal House, they have closest with their prequel to Monsters Inc, Monsters University.

The story of how Mike Wozowski (Billy Crystal) and Sully (John Goodman) met, it opens with a flashback to a young Mike going on a field trip to Monsters Inc, where he stumbles through a door to the human world and is so entranced by the field of scaring that he decides that whatever it takes, he's going to be a scarer.   Cut down the road a little to his freshman year of college and everything is going fine for Mike:  he's gotten into Monsters U and he's finagled his way into the Intro to Scaring- the weedout course to gain entry into the prestigious scaring program that Mike so desires.

It's then he meets Sully.  Sully comes from a family of scarers and relies on his natural abilities, family name and a rough sort of charm to skate through class and school.  He gets into the prestigious fraternity of Roar Omega Roar while Mike has to redouble his efforts to prove he's got it.   A rivalry develops between the two which culminates in the Scare Final, where they're both dropped from the course:  Sully for not studying enough and Mike for not being scary.

Mike refuses to give up and joins Oozma Kappa Ooozma, the only frat on campus he can get into and challenges Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren) to a wager:  if OKO wins the on campus Scare Games, they can get into the scaring program.  She agrees, but on the condition that if they lose, they're all kicked out of school.

The usual shenanigans ensue- but instead of tying it all neatly in a bow like most of these movies do, there's a twist to the ending which I won't reveal- only to say that it ends up getting both Mike and Sully kicked out of school and surprisingly, the Dean wishes them luck and they end up getting jobs at Monsters Inc and working their way up the food chain to become the scarers we met in the next movie, Monsters Inc.

There are some kids movies and kids television shows that I can't stand- I put them on, The Cigarillo is entertained, I do my best to ignore them. (See:  Dora and her yelling, any CGI animated Thomas and Friends, etc, etc) but the animated films that can break through the boundaries of genre and become great movies to me are the ones that work for both kids and adults and this one does and then some.  Massively entertaining, fun to watch and a great time, Pixar nails it once again.  Overall:  **** out of ****