MONSTERS, INC.

2001

The folks at Pixar Animation Studios are complete geniuses and they have done it again. Monsters in an alternate world use our childrens' screams much as we use electricity- to power just about everything. When a child crawls through its closet door into the monsters' world, chaos ensues as the monsters are actually deathly afraid of humans. The voices of Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi and James Coburn breath additional layers of personality onto the already vivid and imaginitive designs of the film's main characters. A clever storyline, fun characters, touching moments and amazing animation all make this one of my five best of the year. Who would've thought that Pixar could have such a worthy follow-up to Toy Story 2? It'll be fun to see how this film stacks up against that movie about the wizard kid (what's his name again?) in a few weeks.

5 Stars

CDF