Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 animated film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released to theatres on November 2, 2001 by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution. It stars the voices of John Goodman (James P. "Sully" Sullivan), Billy Crystal (Michael "Mike" Wazowski), Mary Gibbs (Boo), Steve Buscemi (Randall Boggs), James Coburn (Henry Waternoose III), Jennifer Tilly (Celia Mae, Mike's Gilrfriend), Bob Peterson (Roz, the secretary), John Ratzenberger (Yeti), Frank Oz (Fungus, Randall's Accomplice), Dan Gerson (Needleman and Smitty, the teenage monsters), Steve Susskind and Bonnie Hunt.

The original story was written by Robert L. Baird , Jill Culton , Peter Docter, Ralph Eggleston , Dan Gerson , Jeff Pidgeon , Rhett Reese , Jonathan Roberts and Andrew Stanton . It was directed by Peter Docter, David Silverman and Lee Unkrich .

Monsters, Inc. premiered on October 28, 2001, and went into general release on November 2 with the best opening ticket sales ever for an animated film and the sixth best of all time.

Disney has shown interest in doing a sequel to Monsters, Inc. once Toy Story 3 is completed in 2007. However, Pixar, like with Toy Story 3, will be uninvolved.

Plot

Monsters, Inc. is set in another universe where monsters live. The film is set in the workplace of the centralized monster power company, Monsters, Inc. Each monster incursion in to our world is through the closet door of a child. In the elaborate facility, there are many doors to children's closets in our world. The scarer monster must scare the child while his partner/technician in the monster world takes care of the portal and scream-collector mechanisms. The collected screams are used to generate energy for the monster world.

The monsters believe that children are toxic and the very touch of a child is poisonous. There are many safety precautions to prevent such contamination. A governmental organization, the Child Detection Agency (CDA), is very aggressive in taking care of child contamination when it occurs. There is even a special code, "23-19" ("twenty-three nineteen"), to alert everyone in the area of such contamination (however, this may simply be the code for touching a child's sock).

The top scarer at Monsters, Inc. is James P. Sullivan, or "Sulley" (John Goodman), a blue-furred giant who is partnered with the green, one-eyed Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal). When taking care of paperwork, Sulley discovers a door that has been left on the scare-floor after shift, contrary to company policy. When Sully investigates the door, a little human girl enters the monster world. It's up to Sulley and Mike to get her back home before the authorities find out. Along the way, they discover that children are not dangerous and that scaring is no longer rewarding. They also solve their world's energy crisis in a way that's far more insidious than merely scaring children in their bedrooms.

Trivia

• Monsters, Inc. won the Academy Award for Best Song (Randy Newman for If I Didn't Have You). It was nominated for Best Animated Feature, Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing and Best Music, Original Score.
• The scene where Sully fears Boo has been thrown in a garbage compressor is inspired by the 1952 Chuck Jones cartoon Feed the Kitty .
• Some of the "sets" in this film were used in the animated feature Toy Story.
• All of the digital displays in Monstropolis (Sulley's clock radio, scare station consoles, "Days Without An Accident" sign) are nixie tubes, a neon digital display technology from the 1960s.
• Near the end of the film, Boo excitedly shows Sully her toys in her room. One of the toys she hands him is a clownfish, a hint to the upcoming Pixar movie Finding Nemo, and another is Jessie from Toy Story 2.

Spin-offs

A manga version of Monsters, Inc. was made by Hiromi Yamafuji and distributed in Kodansha's Comic Bon Bon magazine in Japan; the manga is published in English by TokyoPop.

Feld Entertainment currently tours a Monsters Inc. edition of their Disney on Ice skating tour.

A series of mini-computer video games, and a multiplatform video game were created, based on the movie.

External links

• The Big Cartoon DataBase entry for Monsters Inc.