Some Monsters Ink
A Pixar triumph.

Mr. Podhoretz is a columnist for the New York Post.
November 3-4, 2001

he best movie of 2001 opened Friday, and it's no big surprise. Monsters, Inc. was made by the people at the computer-animation company Pixar. In 1995, Pixar's Toy Story was the best film of that year. In 1998, A Bug's Life was one of the two or three best, and the same was true for 1999's Toy Story 2. Without question, Pixar has become the most reliable producer of amusing, resonant, and original cinematic entertainment in the world. This comfortable corporate collaboration between Apple honcho Steve Jobs and a great storyteller named John Lasseter — who really ought to be as famous as Steven Spielberg or George Lucas — is without peer.

Forget Spielberg's overblown pseudo-studio, Dreamworks. Pixar, is the real Dreamworks.

Computer animation is chillingly cold and clinical in everybody else's hands. Somehow, Pixar makes everything seem wondrously alive, vivid, and immensely human — even though its characters are primarily toys, bugs, and the monsters who live in your closet. The brilliant conceit of Monsters, Inc. is that there's a special kind of industrial power plant behind the doors of every child's bedroom that supplies all the energy needed for a city called Monstropolis. Regular-Joe monsters enter the room, collect the sounds of the child's screams in a yellow container, and bring them back to power the city's energy grid.

Unfortunately for the paternalistic concern known as Monsters, Inc. — slogan: We Scare Because We Care — kids just aren't that easy to scare these days. And so the city is suffering from an energy crisis. The best scream producer is our hero, Sully (voiced by John Goodman), a big furry creature with purple highlights in his all-over blue body hair. He's a lovable working-class guy, the perennial Employee of the Month. His Ed Norton is a giant eyeball named Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) who operates the scream-catching machinery.

Monstropolis and Monsters, Inc. are lovingly rendered in the manner of a late-1950s American city — the style is what architecture critic Daryl Hine once called "Populuxe." Monstropolis seems like a nice place to live and Monsters, Inc. a fun place to work. Only one thing scares a monster, and that's a child's germs. Kids are "killing machines," and should a single sock travel back with a monster from a kid's room, the Child Detection Agency goes to relentless work decontaminating the place.

When a two-year-old girl mysteriously turns up inside Monsters, Inc., Sully decides (for reasons that are never made all that clear) to cover up the fact of her presence. He calls her Boo. She calls him Kitty. And from there a series of hilariously cascading plot developments make Monsters, Inc. by turns a slapstick comedy, wild adventure tale and rollercoaster ride culminating in a chase sequence as inspired as any in modern movie history.

Conservatives who simply can't stand such things should know that, yes, there's an anti-corporate plot development. But don't worry — it'll sail right over your kids' heads.

Even if you're a Randian, you must go see this movie.