Disney : Pixar
Region 2 : Collector's Edition 2 disc set
Language : English
Subtitles : English, English for the Hearing Impaired, Swedish, Norwegian,
Danish, Finnish
Sound : Dolby 5.1; DTS 5.1
Extras : Disc 2 over 3 hours of footage
Directed by Peter Docter &
David Silverman
Writing
credits
Robert L. Baird (additional screenplay material) Jill Culton (story)
Cast
overview, first billed only:
John Goodman.... James P. Sullivan a.k.a Sulley (voice)
Billy Crystal.... Michael "Mike/Googly Bear' Wazowski (voice)
Mary Gibbs.... Boo (voice)
Steve Buscemi.... Randall Boggs (voice)
James Coburn.... Monsters, Inc. CEO Henry J.Waternoose III (voice)
Jennifer Tilly.... Celia 'Shmoopsie Poo' Mae the Receptionist (voice)
Bob Peterson.... Roz the Dispatch Manager (voice)
John Ratzenberger.... Yeti (voice)
Frank Oz.... Fungus (voice)
Daniel R. Gerson.... Needleman, Smitty (voice) (as Daniel Gerson)
Steve Susskind.... Floor Manager (voice)
Bonnie Hunt.... Flint (voice)
Jeff Pidgeon.... Thaddeus 'Phlegm' Bile (voice)
Sam 'Penguin' Black.... George Sanderson (voice) (as Sam Black)
Jack Angel.... Additional Voice (voice
Monsters Inc is the fourth feature length computer animated film from Pixar Animation Studios; and if you look back to “Toy Story” (1995) and “A Bug Life” (1998) then the advances in technology are nothing short of stunning.
It's not just the computer animation that make their films so special, it's their understanding of film techniques, story, character and dialog that comes from John Lasseter’s background in working on such films as “Mickey's Christmas Carol” (1983) for Disney and “Young Sherlock Holmes” (1985) for ILM before he helped set up Pixar.
I
n
the town of Monstropolis, Sulley and Mike work at Monsters Inc a company that
collects screams from children of the human world and converts the screams into
power. Sulley is the top
Scarer, and near the all time scare record, however, he has a rival, Randall
Boggs, who will stop at nothing to get the record.
There is one thing however that scares the monsters – human children. When Randall's dirty tricks go astray and a child (Boo) enters Monstropolis all sorts of chaos ensues as Sulley and Mike try to return her to the human world without anybody noticing.
Sulley and Mike are (as the trailer said ‘Just doing their jobs’) and of course fall for the charms of Boo, allowing Randall's foul plan for capturing human children and submitting them to the scream machine to be tested.
There is fast moving action, lovable monsters and of course slapstick comedy but this is not simply a film for children. These days, for a family film to be successful, it has to appeal to the adults who have taken the children to the cinema, or are watching at home with them, and with so much going on it's hard for adults not to get drawn into the general situation. While the humour has some distinctly adults joke for obvious reasons. Whilst some of the storyline may be a little scary for small children, it all ends up happily for our heroes. Though the idea that small friendly employee run companies are better than big blank mega corporations is hardly the reality of US business.
There are a lot of in jokes – such as the restaurant named "Harryhausen's", indeed they have their own ‘In Jokes’ section on the second disc.
The technical quality is as perfect and you can get with a
digital source
transfer to DVD. The 1.85:1
anamorphic transfer is bright and clear and full of colour. Everything is locked
in place; blacks are dark with no noise while the colours are solid and steady
with no sign of bleeding. There are two sound options for the film, Dolby 5.1
and a DTS 5.1, both are clean and clear with plenty of atmospheric effects,
listen especially to the door room chase sequence. As usual the DTS mix does
have the edge with more presence and clarity.
Its no real wonder that the TV shops are using ‘Monsters Inc’ as a
demonstration disc to show off the TV’s – you could even use it as a disc
for showing off your system. (Particularly the comedy version of the THX Logo
before the start of the film.)
This two disks collector’s edition has of course the majority of extras on disc 2.
Disc 1 does, however, feature an audio commentary from Pete Docter, Lee Umkrich, John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton. This is an interesting commentary, describing the process of making the film, character and scene development, and an explanation of some of the technology break throughs. It's not for children though who will rapidly get bored.
Lastly on disc one there is a trailer for the next Pixar movie "Finding Nemo".
The second disc of this collectors set is absolutely packed with material, so much so that I’m only going to review some of it.
The opening menu features two doors, Humans Only and Monsters Only. The Human world concentrates on the world of Pixar and the making of the film while the Monsters door introduces you as a new employee of the Monsters, Inc. factory. The Monsters section is split into three sections, "New Adventures", "Behind the Screams" and "Monsters, Inc. Orientation". In new adventures there is a new four-minute short "Mike's new car", a collection of "interstitials" made for US TV, a music video of the song "If I Didn't Have You" and a read along story "Welcome to Monstropolis". You also get "Peek-a Boo: Boo's door game" and perhaps most interesting some animation created for the Japanese Television "Ponkickies 21" which is just bizarre. "Behind the screams" has yet more animation; "deleted scenes" featured during the end titles and "On the Job with Mike and Sulley" a two-minute "news report" on our heroes. We also get to see "Company Play Program" which was created by Pixar to be the actual program from the play featured in the film. The last section in the Monsters section is "Orientation". There are two types of material here, video and static picture galleries. The short animations make up the video section "Welcome to Monster's Inc", "Your First Day" and "History of Monster World". The static galleries introduce to the world with pictures and text, most amusing is the "Employee Handbook" with such gems as "Hazard I.D Symbols" and "How to avoid Repetitive Scare Injury".
The
bulk of the material is in the "Human world" and includes all the
usual material you'd find on a disc that explains the film making process. So
you get "Early animation tests" (with a commentary by Thomas Porter,
Steve May and Michael Fong) "Guide to in -jokes" (21 page still
gallery with explanations), "International Inserts" (replacing English
with local languages in the film), picture galleries and behind the scenes
material.
One particularly strange piece is the section on "Binaural recording", watch and listen with headphones and be amazed. (Binaural recording had a brief life in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s – the BBC even did some plays in the format, but it would appear to have died with the advent of multi-channel recording. So why there is a binaural sound test is a secret only known by someone at Pixar.)
"For the Birds" the Academy Award winning short that played before Monsters Inc in cinemas is a joy to watch again. Disney has been doing great work recently with their premiere releases and I have to say that the collector's edition of "Monsters Inc" is no exception. However, on various DVD site forums, there has been a number of people who have had trouble with the extra disc and even the menus, so it would seem that Disney are still not catering for all DVD players.
Whoever at Disney is responsible for sub-editing their boxes and leaflets did not do their job. On the box it is stated that there is a ‘Surround Sound Effects Mix’ – the film is in 1.85:1 Widescreen – there is only a Dolby 5.1 soundtrack. On the leaflet it says there is a choice of presentation of Fullscreen 1.33:1 or Widescreen 1.85:1 and that the sound is Dolby 5.1 Ex soundtrack or Dolby 5.1Ex sound effects only track.
In actual fact what you get is the film in 1.85:1 Widescreen a Dolby 5.1 soundtrack AND a DTS 5.1 soundtrack (the DTS logo is on the disc).
Monsters, Inc is a worthy addition to any collection of family films.