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DVD: Monsters need a little mystery
[Photo: Disney/Pixar]
Mike (voice of Billy Crystal) and Sully (John Goodman) are cornered by an “intruder” in Monsters, Inc. |
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 19, 2002
Monsters, Inc. (two-disc collector's edition)
Keep the booklet insert for Monster's, Inc. close at hand and folded open to the navigational map inside. That's the easiest way to maneuver through an impressively convoluted collection of bonus features on the second disc.
The design is based on the fright factory in this amusing animated comedy, a vast conveyor belt of doorways to children's bedrooms used by scary creatures. Choose the "Humans only" side for technical background about the movie, or the "Monsters only" side for the fun stuff. No fewer than 51 segments are included, some not worth your time.
The best of the bonuses by far is a brand new Pixar Animation Studios short subject created for the home video release. Mike's New Car continues the misadventures of scaremongers Mike Wazowski (voice of Billy Crystal) and James P. Sullivan (John Goodman). This time they attempt a test ride in Mike's new 6-wheel drive, if they can decipher the dashboard. Also included is For the Birds, the Oscar-winning short subject that preceded Monsters, Inc. in theaters.
From there, the extras branch into elementary interactive games -- Peek-A-Boo: Boo's Door Game is briefly distracting -- and a few oddities such as animation created for the Japanese kiddie show Ponkickies 21 with Mike and Sully playing Rock, Paper, Scissors with subtitles.
Seeing those TV "bumpers" of Mike and Sully during the holidays and sports seasons reminds us how complete Disney's promotional pushes can be: not just in the United States, but internationally, with visual adjustments to the movie, voice dubbing and title designs in languages like Euro-Portuguese.
Skip the 20-minute production tour and most of the "Music and Sound" section. The outtakes created for the movie, added weeks into the release to encourage more ticket sales, are shown at least twice. Much of the material regarding story creation, characters and artistic designs are one-time distractions. Do we really need to see grown filmmakers playing with toys that cashed in on their art?
But check out a 13-minute original treatment of Monsters, Inc. that defined the plot; it was filmed from artist renderings and doesn't resemble the final product in tone or detail. Speaking of details, viewers will enjoy a list of in-jokes from the movie, such as a funny ingredients list on breakfast cereal boxes that barely registered anyway in the background of Mike and Sully's apartment. (Who knew that depleted uranium is a freshness preservative?)
And don't forget to take the orientation tour of Monsters, Inc., with a recruitment film for new employees, suggested behavior for one's first day at work and an employee handbook. More of the collector's edition should take that subversive tack instead of so much explanation about the way everything was done. Spoiling the fantasy is what's really scary.
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