Monsters University (2013)

What is it with rehashes of Revenge of the Nerds lately?  Monsters University is the second movie I've seen in the past month (The Internship being the other) that borrows heavily from Nerds.

Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) was inspired at a young age to become a scarer.  He studied harder than everyone and eventually got accepted to Monsters University.  Despite knowing the ins and outs of scaring, Mike has a lot of doubters that don't believe he has the innate ability to be a good scarer.  Jake Sullivan (John Goodman), on the other hand, comes from a well known scaring family and has all the physical attributes you'd want to have.  Mike and Jake start out at odds, competing to see who's the better scarer.  Sully thinks Mike just doesn't have what it takes, and Mike thinks Sully is just relying on his family's name and natural ability to get by.

Their competition gets the better of them though, and both are eventually kicked out of the scare program by the Dean (Helen Mirren).  Their only chance back in is to win the Scare Games, a series of contests that pit all the various fraternities and sororities against each other.  Mike and Sully are forced to put their differences aside and join the fraternity full of castoffs in order to compete in the Games.  Nobody thinks their fraternity has even the slightest chance, but Mike thinks he can whip them into shape.  Sounds all too familiar, eh?

Even though it follows a familiar format and contains familiar themes, I still enjoyed Monsters University.  This is one of those times where I wasn't bothered by all the reused tropes and plot elements.  I tend to enjoy underdog stories, even though they tend to be predictable.  It's also a prequel that works.  I liked seeing how Mike and Sully started out and eventually became the friends we know from Monsters, Inc.  It also serves to make them both more sympathetic characters when you see the issues they had to overcome.  Although one of the issues with doing a prequel so long after the fact is that many of the characters we spend time getting to know in Monsters University aren't mentioned or seen in Monsters, Inc.  There are a few common characters like Randy (Steve Buscemi) though.  On the other hand, it really won't matter what order you watch either of these films.  There's nothing really spoiled or ruined by watching them in a particular order.

If they ever do decide to do a third film, I'd like to see them do something far in the future.  Maybe base it around Boo as a college student herself, whose long forgotten her adventure with Kitty and and Mike Wazowski.

The humor is pretty standard and definitely geared towards the family.  Most of the families sitting around me all laughed at various points.  I didn't find it particularly funny myself, but not because it was childish.  Just not quite enough bite for my tastes.  However, there's a great sequence at the end that fans of horror films will really appreciate.  I don't know which of the three writers wrote that section (Robert L. Baird, Daniel Gerson, and director Dan Scanlon), but it was a smart sequence that was best part of the film for me.

As you'd expect with a Pixar film, the animation is top notch.  When you compare this with Monsters, Inc. it really is amazing to see how far it's come.  There are times where things are so realistic looking - particularly with the short film before the main feature - that you may think real sets are used with the characters added in after.  It truly is beautiful, and worth watching just for the animation if that's your thing.

Monsters University is one of the rare examples of a prequel that's on par with original, and I actually enjoyed it a little more than Monsters, Inc.  While it's definitely not Pixar's best work, and dives a little too deep into familiar territory, it's still a fun and engaging film that the whole family can enjoy together.  Easy matinee recommendation for this one.

3.5 (out of 5) Death Stars

God Bless America (2012) - Movie Review

Have you ever seen a vapid Reality-TV personality and wanted to eliminate them?  Ever wanted to strangle someone for being rude?  Well, here's the movie for you...

God Bless America is the story of Frank (Joel Murray, Bill's brother), a man who finally snaps when life continues to deal him a bad hand while simultaneously getting fed up with the decay of society.  You see that Frank is divorced and has a bratty, unappreciative daughter, has horrible neighbors, gets fired from his job for a bullshit reason, and then to really pile it on, he's told that he has an inoperable brain tumor.  Frank flirts with suicide only to stop when watching a self-entitled brat on a 'My Super Sweet 16'-like show.  He decides to do the world a favor by getting rid of her before checking out himself.

As Frank commits the murder, he's spotted by one the victim's classmates, Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr).  However, Roxy thinks killing her classmate was awesome and encourages Frank to continue killing.  Together they go on a cross-country killing spree ridding the world of similar people they think are detrimental to society.

In the early part of the film, Frank has some great, articulate rants about how we've devolved, lack common courtesy, and how nobody can even have conversations anymore without checking their phone or talking about something they just saw on TV or the internet.  We celebrate the worst human qualities and feature it on TV every day.  This is where I felt God Bless America shined.  It's easy to identify Frank's rants and see that he's an intelligent guy.  Joel Murray did a good job of making him someone you initially like and sympathize with.  Outside of the killing, he's a level-headed guy.

Roxy, however, was a little harder to get behind.  She's completely desensitized to violence (another problem in modern society) and seems to revel in the killing.  It's not that Tara Lynne Barr's performance was bad, I actually liked her and think she's a young actress to keep an eye on, but it's more of a problem with the way the character was written.  She's actually more violent than Frank and wants to kill anyone that simply annoys her, where he only wants to kill people that are basically mean and 'deserve it'.

However, the main problem with the movie is when they talk about only killing people that 'deserve it', it gets into dangerous territory.  How do you know someone deserves to die?  Because they were mean to you?  Maybe they were having a bad day.  Many people that kill think the victim deserved it.  Where does it end?  For example, they happen upon a guy who's double parked a sports car and shoot him.  For double parking.  Really?  Sure, the guy is a dick, but is being dick or double parking a crime against society worthy of death?  You could make the argument that many of the people killed in the movie truly didn't deserve it.  It makes it harder to get behind the characters and what they are doing.  At a certain point you feel like you're simply watching two nuts on a rampage, while at the same time acting as if  they are the only sane people in a insane world.

I will say that they kill some people for talking and using their phones in a movie theater and that is something I can get behind, so I guess I'm guilty of dark thoughts like Frank's.  We probably all are.

I do think the underlying point God Bless America is valid and important.  Would the world be better off with less self-entitled, narcissistic dickheads?  Should we all start being a little nicer to each other and showing more common courtesy and decency?  Could we use less bad reality TV and TV personalities like the Kardashians.  Of course!  It's just that the point started to get lost as the movie went on and became about killing more and more people.

The flip side of this is if all the terrible stuff on TV annoys you so much, turn it off!  I hate a lot of that crap, too, but I don't watch it, because I try not to watch things that annoy me.

Another thing that's off about the movie, and it's actually a pretty big plot hole, is that despite committing all these murders, many with witnesses or being caught on camera, they are never on the run from the police.  Not until the very last scene of the movie are they in any danger of being caught by the cops.  There's barely even the hint of police throughout the movie.  In fact, Frank's ex-wife is engaged to a cop and when he sees them, he just goes, "Oh hey guys!  What's going on?"

God Bless America was written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait. If you seen any of his other films, he's got a pretty dark sense of humor.  I've enjoyed his previous films, so I had been looking forward to this.  The humor in the movie comes mostly from the parodies of the TV shows they feature.  The dialog itself, outside of Frank's rants, is pretty uneven.  It actually felt a little too preachy at points. 

Don't get me wrong, I liked God Bless America, but it felt like the great first half was let down by the second half.  It fizzles out and the conclusion isn't very satisfying.  I think it's worth watching, but it's better suited for a rental when you're in the mood for a dark satire about modern society.

3 (out of 5) Death Stars