Monsters University

Since 2011, you could say Pixar films have been a little down. Cars 2 was a poor sequel that struggled with it's story and did not the capture the heart of the original. Brave from 2012 has a solid following but you can  find non-fans of it unlike most other pixar films. This would make you wonder what was left of such a powerful animation company especially when you had a prequel coming in 2013 to a very poular movie Monsters Inc.

Monsters University, prequel to the 2001 movie Monsters Inc, and follows the characters of Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and Sulley (John Goodman) during their university days where both of them have dreams of becoming scarier monsters. Their ultimate goal is to work for Monsters Inc. at a job involving scaring kids to provide energy for the city. At Monsters University, they play in some university scare game, interact with the popular monsters and groups at the school and learn how to be friends with each other.

In a way, the film rehashes much of what we have seen before. The lead characters are the same and we know their in's and outs and the university games idea has been played out in other movies like Revenge of the Nerds. Of course, Mike Wazowski and Sulley are characters you can root for with one being a nerd and jock and its should be noted that the voice work solid with both of them all the way through. Mike and Sulley makes us look at what a friendship is all about and can happen regardless of people's different interests and background.

The animation is solid, crisp and on par with previous Pixar films. The scares challenges and games are creative and full of adventures and provide an interesting atmosphere while bringing in new fraternity characters. Through it all, the whole university idea is new and original to the animation world and it really worked here.

While this is not a ground-breaking movie nor Pixar's best, Monsters University is still quite solid. It is a sequel (but as mentioned earlier really a prequel) geared towards the whole family that has a big heart and really works.

4/5

Parental Guidance

We have seen this all before. A film playing at every theater that is full of stars wasting their talent and also our money. A film that does not know what it is. We saw it with the Cheaper by the Dozen films, and the Yours, Mines and Our remake. Parental Guidance is a film that closes out 2012 with the worst of the worst of everything.

Parental Guidance has an unoriginal story of grandparents staying temporarily with their grandkids while the parents are out of town and the outcome is not good.

The film has a great cast with Billy Crystal, Bette Midler, Marisa Tomei, Gedde Watanabe and Bailey Madison but really there isn't much to like about them here. Mostly, we get dry acting with some very plain writing. There are only about a dozen jokes that are laughable and that is it. After an hour and half with these dry and undeveloped characters, it hard to sit through much more.

There are a few original ideas including a recently fired baseball announcer who doesn't know what to do with himself and speech involving the famed Bobby Thompson home run call but really there is nothing special about this plot. It has the characters running around doing nothing and it is just not interesting. It does build up the idea of the Bailee Madison character going to a party but then the party is never shown.

Parental Guidance is also a film that really does not seem to know much about how the world really is. The film is set in a futuristic house that feels like it was made in Epcot which doesn't seen very real. They also have an X-Games scene which looks like it was shot in a small city park though the X-Games are really of course a very large spectacle. There is also a rain scene that couldn't look more phony.

                               A bright family but all lacking genetics


There really is no point to all of this. You could say that the movie is saying something about parenting but actually it is more about bad parenting.

Actually, I did not hate this movie as you might think and could sit through it again if I had to. That said I found it to be pretty useless and not a very smart movie, like a movie without a brain.

1.5/5