It makes me shake my head and sigh when I read reviews about kid’s movies written by reviewers that have no children. I imagine them writing their review from a city loft filled with white furniture while sipping a rare chardonnay.
It makes me shake my head and sigh when I read reviews about kid’s movies written by reviewers that have no children. I imagine them writing their review from a city loft filled with white furniture while sipping a rare chardonnay.
Me? I’m writing this with a five and an eight-year-old breathing down my neck for “their turn” on the computer. I have been saying, “Just a few more minutes…” for 45 minutes and am buying time by playing Monsters University trailers in the corner of the screen.
Why are child-less people reviewing these movies anyway? We’re parents. We don’t care if the “plot held no surprises” or the “protagonists and antagonists were underdeveloped.” Come on! Save that pseudo-intellectual banter for Woody Allen films and leave us alone.
Do you know how many G-rated movies are released every year? One. Maybe two if the planets are aligned. I have to pay 10 bucks to pre-screen PG and PG-13 movies to see whether or not I’ll be having a monster, bully, or “smooching” talk with my kids if I let them see it.
Monsters University isn’t reinventing the genre? So what! My family loves Mike and Sully. We love them so much that we wanted to see more of them. A fun summer romp with our favorite monsters? Yes please. And that’s exactly what Pixar gave us. No groundbreaking formulas or plot twists…just a safe, funny movie. Thank you.
“How did Mike and Sully meet? Why is Randall so mad at them? Where are Mike’s privates?” These are the kinds of questions a parent needs answers to. And “Monsters University” gave me the answers to all but one. (Pants would be nice, Wazowski.)
Mike and Sully met at College. I like it. My husband really liked the college / fraternity jokes and references. Maybe too much.They met in the “learn-how-to-scare” program. They were assigned as roommates. But guess what? They didn’t get along at first. How did they resolve their “I’m a better scarer than you!” issues and become the best buds we know and love? That’s the ride this movie takes you on. Lots of great new characters make up the Oozma Kappa Fraternity. You know, the fraternity made up of misfits that are always the last pick for teams. Mike & Sully end up joining OK in a last ditch attempt to win the scare games and hold their places in MU’s scare program. For the most part, the scare games were funny. However, there was a pretty intense scene in which the players had to do an obstacle course at a staged summer camp. The writers had fun referencing the horror movie/summer camp genre, but for small kids, (who don’t appreciate slasher movie parodies) it was pretty scary. “Mommy, I want to go! Uh…I have to go to the bathroom! Run for our lives!” Thankfully, the scene wasn’t too long and my boys haven’t mentioned it again, so I’m hoping the emotional scar is small.
But don’t worry, there’s way more fun than scares in Pixar’s first ever prequel. And did I mention funny? We now have three new character phrases added to our family’s vernacular: “I can’t go back to jail!” screamed by Art, a fuzzy, purple, arch-shaped monster is in heavy rotation at our house. My five-year-old can do a dead on impression of, “Oh, man…I can’t be late on the first day!” yelled frantically by a snail going twice the speed of your usual snail. And my new favorite sung by Squishy’s Uber-midwestern Mom, “Have fun kids, I’ll just be here listening to my tunes,” gets reenacted by me daily. (With different tunes for comic effect, of course.)
Is there a valuable moral to this story? When I asked my eight-year-old if Monsters University taught him any life lessons he said, “Yes, a very important one…don’t sneak into buildings.” I was confused, “Why don’t you want to sneak into buildings, Nate?” “Because…I CAN’T GO BACK TO JAIL!”
Maryellen Hooper
