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Monsters University | Review

Monsters University one-minute review: It’s been over ten years since we’ve last seen Mike and Sully. This is yet another Pixar sequel (prequel, technically), and though it’s nice to see our favorite monsters back on screen, it isn’t totally necessary.

Where the original followed Sully, MU is Mike’s story. It follows his first year of college where he aims to be a professional scarer. There he meets Sully, who’s a more immature and douchey version than in Monsters Inc. The two join the Ooza kappa fraternity where they meet a ragtag team of “non-scary” monsters. In order to prove their worthy as true “scarers,” the frat enters a campus-wide Scaring Competition.

The original film had a more emotional factor in the form of boo, and a theme about looking past preconceived notions and stereotypes. MU is a bro-ship between Mike and Sully and how they move from resenting one another to needing one another. And where many other animated films may say “you can do whatever you want as long as you work hard for it,” MU has the more mature theme of realizing your limits and accepting them.

MU is not a Pixar home run like we’ve gotten used to, but maybe it’s time I accept the fact that not every Pixar film will be super sentimental and have an emotional element. They can do genre films very well, and this film is an excellent genre film set in college.

Three out of four Kent's.