Monsters University

Pixar has done it again. This movie is every bit as good as I'd hoped. Yes, critics still dumped on it for being another sequel (prequel) but they're just stuffy film critics who wouldn't know a good film if it fell out of the sky and landed on their head, splattering all over their clothes. I'm writing this review in the middle of the night. I'm probably going to be a little weirder than normal.

Yeah, I'm sure you're wondering why I'm writing this now, Monsters University came out last month, it's old news. Yeah, I am late, but I still wanted to write something, because this was a really good movie. Though I am still on the fence as to whether or not it was better than The Croods, but I've decided not to pick a favorite.

Maybe.

I don't know. The Croods was SO good! Maybe it WAS better than a Pixar film? Can that happen two years in a row? A non-Pixar film being better than the Pixar film? I KNOW it won't happen next year. The movie is called "The Good Dinosaur." There is NO WAY any other movie is gonna beat that.

Anyway, this sounds too much like I'm ragging on MU for not being good enough, but I'm really not! It was so good! It's just that I really loved The Croods.

Monsters University was a great movie. It was unusual in that it kind of had the opposite message of most feel-good family films. Most films seem to tell you "Follow your dreams, believe in yourself, and eventually all your dreams will come true!" This film's message was "Follow your dreams, but be prepared, because they may not come true at all, and that's ok." That's a rather wordy message, and I'm sure that I could probably try to come up with a more concise way of saying that, but as I said before, it's the middle of the night, and my thinking parts aren't cogitating rightly.

The movie follows Mike (The green eyeball from Monsters Inc.) as he attends Monsters University to become a scarer. As we all know from watching Monsters Inc, Mike never became a scarer. The movie is all about Mike getting his dreams crushed. Sort of. It's about Mike's journey of self discovery, as he realizes that his life-long dream is unattainable, and how he comes to grips with that. But this movie is a lot more fun and funny than I am making it sound.

I won't give away any of the movie for those who still haven't seen it, but I do want to just highlight a few of my favorite things about the movie.

#1 The pigeon. If you have seen the movie you know exactly what I'm talking about. SQURAAAAAAAWWW!!!!

#2 Dean Hardscrabble. Best monster design ever. I hate centipedes, but dragon/centipede hybrids? Awesome! 

#3 Squishy's dance. It rivals Napoleon Dynamite's dance scene, as the best dance scene in cinematic history. Also, the music from that scene? I bought the song, and I've lost count of how many times I've played it. Here, listen for yourself. :)

#4 Squishy's mother. Listening to her tunes, and dancing while doing the laundry. Too funny.

#5 "I can't go back to jail!" Funniest line ever.

So there you have it. My better-late-than-never review of Pixar's latest masterpiece. If you haven't seen it yet, your need to. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll wish for a mutant pigeon of your very own.

The Croods: Movie Review

Last night my cousins and I did something we almost never do. We went to a movie on opening night. Usually, to avoid the crowds, we wait until a movie has been in the theater for awhile before we go see it. But for whatever reason we decided to brave the crowds and go see "The Croods" on the first night anyway. And we were all glad we did. It was amazing. In so many ways.

The Croods is about a family of cavemen who are forced to leave the safety of their cave and travel across a vast, unknown country in search of a new home. It is not like anything you might expect. The cavemen do not speak in grunts, none of the animals are real, and for a story supposedly set in "The Stone Age" this movie was teeming with gorgeous plant life.

As a minor side note before I really begin, I just wanted to say that something I found very refreshing, especially from a movie called "The Croods" was that it was not crude in the least! There was not one single burp or fart joke in the entire movie! Before I went to see it I thought to myself, wouldn't it be hilarious if they subverted the audience's expectations completely and did not have any crude humor whatsoever? Little did I know is that is exactly what they had done!

The one thing all three of us noted most about the movie was how incredibly hilarious it was. I know I tend to over-use the word hilarious sometimes, but this movie was genuinely laugh-out-loud funny almost the whole way through. The characters all had distinct personalities, and they were all funny in different ways. I loved the grandmother. I tend to love "Old Ladies With Attitude" characters anyway, so this was a natural favorite for me. The baby was also hilarious. She didn't speak, but was almost like a savage little dog. The scene in the beginning where they use her during the hunt to chase down the ram-bird was hysterical!

The main character of the movie was a teenager named Eep. I loved her name. Don't ask me why, but I just found it so funny that her name is Eep. Eep is like most teenagers, she wants more freedom than her parents will allow, but she has a real problem with her dad, Grug. He is extremely over-protective, and terrified of everything. His motto is "Never not be afraid." One day Eep meets a hot young caveman named Guy, who has a pet sloth named Belt. (Belt holds his pants up) Guy is the complete opposite of her dad. He is far more courageous than her father, he loves exploring the world, and he invents things like fire, shoes, and giant puppets. When they are forced to move, Grug begrudgingly allows Guy to lead them across the wilderness in search of a new home.

Aside from the writing and characters, I also loved the art and animation. Everything was so vibrant and colorful. It was a visual feast. The animals were also extremely creative. As I said before, none of them were real. One might expect to find all the stereotypical "Stone-Age" creatures in a film about cavemen, but this was not your typical caveman movie. This was pure imagination at its finest. The closest it came to having "Stone-Age" animals was a mammoth and a sabre-toothed cat, but neither of these were your typical creatures either. The Mammoth seemed to be part leopard, and the Cat was part macaw, but they didn't look strange at all. The design was fantastic! Almost all of the animals in the film were some kind of hybrid/imaginary creature. Aside from Belt, I don't think any of them were real animals at all. There were whales that walked on land, Swarms of piranha-birds, a crocodile puppy, and giant snaggle-toothed, spoon-billed, fish-turkeys.

The last thing I should note about the movie was the music. It was great. The two main parts that stand out most in my mind, are the beginning and the end. In the beginning, during the hunt, the music is done by what sounds like a cross between an orchestra and a marching band. It was such a strange choice, but it worked so well! And finally, the music at the end. Two words, Owl City. That's all I really need to say. It was so good. But don't just take my word for it, watch the music video for yourself!



To sum up my feelings about this movie: GO SEE IT!!! There is no way you will regret it! I left the theater with a huge smile on my face that would not go away, and I wanted to go back and see it again immediately! I haven't felt like that about a movie in a long time! There are quite a few movies that I am looking forward to seeing this year, but they are going to have to be EXTREMELY good if they want to top The Croods!