Over the last week or so, my lady friend and I ventured out
to our local movie houses to see a pair of kids’ movies.
First
up was “Monsters University,” Pixar’s prequel to its 2001 hit “Monsters, Inc.”
“Monsters,
Inc.” was never really all that high up in Pixar’s catalogue for me. It’s not
particularly low either, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of the middle.
I’ve seen it once, thought it was fine and don’t plan on seeking it out or
avoiding it for that matter.
And
that’s kind of pretty much exactly how I feel about “Monsters University.” It
was fine. Occasionally it was very funny, but the story suffered from the
prequel curse of predictability.
It’s
essentially “When Mike met Sully.” Spoiler alert … seriously … They don’t start
out as best friends. In fact, they’re kind of enemies. Mike is the lovable
underdog out to prove himself to the world, Sully is the kid from the famous
family. They both wind up in MU’s famed scarer program, start competing with
each other and run afoul of the dean and get kicked out said program.
Of
course, there just so happens to be a major scaring contest coming up and Mike
bets the dean that if they win, they can rejoin the scarer program. The only
catch is they need the help of the dorkiest, least scary frat on campus in
order to win.
Can
Mike and Sully turn their lovable bands of doofs into terror machines? You’ll
just have to watch the movie to find out.
If
there’s one lesson I learned from “Monsters University” --- see what I did
there? --- it’s that Charlie Day needs to be in everything. The fact that he’s
not the most in-demand comedic actor out there right now is one of our nation’s
greatest shames.
Day
makes everything better. He plays a lower case “n” shaped monster that’s in
Mike and Sully’s frat. Not surprisingly, Day can lay claim to nearly all of the
movie’s biggest laughs. Without him, I’m not saying this could have been “Cars
2” territory, but who knows? I won’t say it officially, because I never
actually saw “Cars 2,” but I heard stories.
“Monsters
University” doesn’t live up to some of Pixar’s heavyweights, but it’s OK. I
think my lady friend liked it more than I did.
It’s funny enough and well-paced enough
that, even though it’s predictable, it never crosses over into boring. Also,
Billy Crystal and John Goodman are back as the main monsters and they’re pretty
awesome too.
But
Charlie Day, ya’ll. Charlie Day.
Not
long after we saw “Monsters Unviersity,” we checked out the sequel to a movie
we both really loved, 2010’s “Despicable Me.”
So how
did the appropriately, if somewhat unimaginatively titled “Despicable Me 2”
stack
up?
I’m
happy to report, pretty darn well. Of course, it’s not as good as part one.
The original movie came out of
nowhere to be not only a big hit, but a hilariously funny comedy with a giant
heart that parents, kids and unattached twenty something weirdos like myself
and my woman could enjoy.
Part two continues the story of former
world class super villain Gru (now world class dad) and the three little girls
he adopted.
As is always the case, just when
Gru thought he was out of the game, along comes the Anti-Villain League (a sort
of heroic bureaucracy) to pull him back in.
Seems there’s a new super villain
out there, threatening to use some sort of serum that turns people into purple
monsters to take over the world.
The AVL needs Gru to find out who
the villain is and save the world. So it’s like using Hannibal Lecter to catch
Buffalo Bill, only with less skin suits made out of women.
“Despicable Me 2” is quite good
despite suffering from a curse of its own: Kristen Wiig. Apparently, it’s
getting harder and harder to make a comedy without her and so even though her
character from part one isn’t in this movie, she gets a brand new role --- as Gru's sidekick --- and it’s
an even bigger part.
It’s troubling, but outside of a
few slip ups, Wiig is mostly kept on a tight leash and doesn’t have to be the
focal point so she’s tolerable.
Some
studio exec must have noticed Gru’s little yellow helpers, known as minions,
were wildly popular in part one, even though they were mostly kept to the
background. That is not the case in part two. The minions are everywhere.
The
minions’ rise takes valuable screen time away from the story and the three
little girls. The older girl gets saddled with a half-developed romance angle,
the youngest one gets some sort of slighted, but still enough to tug on the
heartstrings, mommy issues. The middle kid gets ignored completely.
There’s
supposed to be some mystery over who the new super villain is, but outside of
one slight red herring, there’s only one person it really could be. That makes
for a pretty crummy mystery sadly.
The minions, even though they seem to be on the road to overexposure, are still
hysterical.
Gru,
voiced by Steve Carell, is a top notch character and he goes toe-to-toe with
the minions, never quite letting the little yellow guys take over his movie. He’s
got some great lines and even manages to get some good stuff out of Wiig, who I
dislike strongly.
Its
heart might not beat anywhere near as strong as part one’s, but “Despicable Me
2,” with its increase in minion activity, might be slightly funnier. Maybe. If
nothing else, it’s close enough to make part two a more than worthy follow-up.
Monsters
University: B-
Despicable
Me 2: B+
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