Monsters, Inc. Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital Copy Pack Review
Posted by Jeffrey Harris on 11.24.2009
Disney pulls out all the stops for one of Pixar's best.
The Movie
While I love pretty much anything Pixar puts out, second to only The Incredibles, my most favored Pixar feature is most definitely Monsters, Inc.. Now with the Blu-ray craze running rampant, Disney has thrown everything and the kitchen sink in their Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy combo pack for the movie. Basically think a 2-disc Blu-ray set with the first disc of the original DVD release and a digital DVD copy. That said, Disney definitely packs a significant bang for your buck for this release for this wonderful, timeless, modern classic.
The city of Monstropolis is dealing with a dangerous energy shortage. The city's energy? Well the city gets it's energy from the screams of young children. So the monstrous denizens of Monstropolis work at the company, Monsters Inc. in order to get scare energy from kids. The CEO of the company, Waternoose, grows leary in that the company is on it's last legs. Children are getting harder to scare. Waternoose sees hope in the company's top scare monster, Sullivan (John Goodman). Sullivan is set to break the scare record much to the happiness of his assistant, Mike (Billy Crystal). This is much to the chagrin however of rival monster, the slithery chameleon-like Randall (Steve Buscemi).
At the end of the work day however, Sullivan notices a door (the monsters go through doors that let them enter the human world on their "scare floor") for a human child's closet left on. There Sullivan encounters the toddler that is aptly named Boo. You see monsters are in fact deathly scared of kids even though their job is to scare them. Monsters also believe that children are toxic and can kill them. Worried about the consequences, Sullivan takes off with Boo to find Mike who is drawn into the conflict worried that having Boo will ruin their careers. Sullivan however forms a close bond with Boo and with Boo's help realizes that Randall was up to no good which encompasses a much deeper plot in taking the scares of children.
Pixar as always delivers with fantastic, beautiful CG animation but more than that they deliver with strong story and character. First they created a world of talking toys, but even more ingenius playing on the childhood imagination in the world of those monsters that live inside our closets. The world they created is ingenious in that it's practically the same as ours with simply minor differences appropriated to the monstrous citizens of Monstropolis.
But more than that, there's something sweet and real about all these characters and that is why Pixar is the top name in animation today. The characters are REAL characters. The relationships are real relationships. There's a natural and realistic emotion to everything in these movies with these characters. And that's why they are so likable. So when you see these dime a dozen CG animated features that are constantly churned out, they are missing the intangible magic that Pixar intentionally creates every time.
The original Shrek was a lot of fun and it was clever for it's time. But it will not be the enduring and timeless classic that Monsters, Inc. will prove to be.
The Rating: 10.0 out of 10.0
The Video
The Blu-ray transfer is nothing short of fantastic. Monsters, Inc. has never looked sharper. No artifacts or halos are present. The picture is clean and pristine as possible. The picture just seems to have an extra layer and depth than the DVD version which is still very good but is a tad softer.
The Rating: 10.0, Blu-ray; 9.0, DVD
The Audio
The Blu-ray features a revamped 5.1 surround sound mix. Much like the video, the sound design just has a whole extra level of depth. Pixar has constantly been raising the bar with music and sound design with their films and its incredibly evident here. They really created a whole world with the sound for the movie as well. There's a lot of ambient sound effects worked in. Randy Newman's music for the movie is probably my personal favorite as far as his work on Pixar films go. The themes and tunes for this movie have this kind of classic, retro feel.
The rating: 10.0, Blu-ray; 9.5, DVD
The Packaging And Extras
The 4 disc set is packaged in the typical Blu-ray clamshell, translucent blue, plastic case. Disney has spared no expense with the amount of extras in this set. Everything you ever wanted to know about Monsters, Inc. and the start to finish process Pixar goes through on a movie is here including tours of Pixar itself. The new Blu-ray disc starts with a new introduction by Pete Doctor going over the new Blu-ray extras and bonus material:
Monsters, Inc. Ride And Go Seek: Building Monstropolis In Japan
Filmmakers' Round Table
Audio Commentary
For The Birds Short
Mike's New Car Short
Roz's 100 Door Challenge Game
Pixar Fun Factory Tour
Story Featurettes
Banished Concepts
Designing Monstropolis
Set Dressing
Storyboard To Film Comparison
Location Flyarounds
Monster File
Animation Featurettes
Music & Sound
Release & Wrap-up Featurettes
New Monster Adventures
Behind The Screams
Orientation
Disc 1
New to the Blu-ray disc is a 22 minute Filmmakers' Roundtable featuring directors Pete Doctor and Lee Unkrich (Lee will also be directing Toy Story 3), story supervisor Bob Peterson, and producer Darla Anderson. This is a nice feature where the movie's creators talk about the early developmental process and Doctor talks about getting into directing a feature for the first time. They also go over one of the early changes in the montage with Sullivan and Mike being introduced into the story and even the reactions of the movie after 9/11.
The other new featurette is the 12 minute Ride And Go Seek documenting the design and physical production of the Monsters, Inc. ride in Disneyland Tokyo. This is sort of like what they used to show off on the Disney Channel before it was Hannah Montana 24/7. It wasn't especially exciting, but the process in building a movie ride was pretty neat as well as the cultural aspects in how Japanese citizens worship Disney.
Ported over from the DVD release was the audio commentary featuring Doctor, Lee Unkrich, and John Lasseter which is an entertaining and informative commentary. Doctor even calls up co-writer Dan Gerson on his cell at one point in the commentary to ask about why a particular story element was changed. Awesome!
Disc 2
This features the bulk of the extras. These are the original DVD extras bundled together on the disc. First is Roz's 100 Door Challenge. This is basically an interactive kiddie game with some trivia questions and simple games to help assign you a position in the company. The other extras are divded into sections For Humans Only and For Monsters Only.
In For Humans Only, there are numerous and very short featurettes documenting every aspect of production for the movie. They are too numerous to mention. Unfortunately navigation on this disc is somewhat overwhelming and unwielding. There's unfortunately not a simple play all feature for any of these featurettes which would've helped smooth the navigation out a little. Included are tours of the Pixar studio as well as the chimp that works there. The production crew gives insight into their character designs as well as creating the entire world and props painstakingly by computer. In the Release section, there's even a little segment where the production crew talks about the movie's toys and what they wanted out of the toys made for the movie half-joking that one reason they wanted toys made is so they could get some for themselves.
My most favorite bonus on disc 2 is Banished Concepts. This is about 10 minutes worth of pencil-drawn edited animatics. Basically edited storyboards that have yet to be animated. This features temp music and voices for Sullivan and Mike before the movie's story changed dramatically. In these sequences, Sullivan is just a lowly company worker like Mike and not at all a top scarer. This is interesting because while there are similar elements it's interesting to see how the story originally evolved before it changed for the better. Now you can't really imagine the movie being any different, but the creative team did at first.
For Monsters Only contains some nice little extras like the Monday Night Football bumpers made by Pixar featuring the Monsters, Inc. characters. There's also some employee training videos for new Monsters, Inc. employees and a special interview with Mike and Sully set within the world of the. Nice, short, and sweet featurettes. Also the outtakes shown with the movie and the musical of "Put That Thing Back Where She Came From" are also included.
Disc 3
Disc 3 is the DVD version of the movie and you get some Disney trailers and the original audio commentary. That's it for bonus features though.
Disc 4
Disc 4 is the digital copy of the movie. No additional extras.
The Rating: 10.0 overall
The 411: While the navigation for the extras are a tad confusing and rather massive, there's tons to enjoy here. The picture and sound are beautiful. And you get the DVD and digital copies put in for good measure. This set is definitely worthy of such an important and beloved movie. Be prepared because you will be monstered out if you go through it all.
