Of course you’re afraid of the monsters in your closet, but did you ever think that the monsters might also be afraid of you?
In the movie Monsters Inc the monster city of Monstropolis is powered by children’s screams. All of the lights in the monsters homes, and all of their electrical appliances are run by the screams of children. How do they get these screams you may ask?
Monsters Inc is the cities power company. Monsters are employed by the company to go from room to room and scare children capturing the sound of their scream and bringing it back as power for the city.
The monster workers show up to work each day in a factory and have door after door placed in front of them with sleeping children behind each one. Like every good story this one has a small catch. The monsters think that they are horribly allergic to children. If a monster comes out of a room with as much as a children’s sock on them they are immediately decontaminated.
James P Sullivan (John Goodman) is the cities scream leader and Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) is his sidekick. In the movie the monsters are striving to beat their current energy crisis, and in one of their attempts to save their city from blackouts they accidentally let a human child back into their world.
In their quest to get the girl home safely the two monsters realize that human children aren’t so bad after all. The two monsters manage to befriend the child Boo, and begin to care for her almost like she is their own child. At the end of the movie the monsters discover that laughter will give their city much more power than they ever got from screams, and encourage their power company to switch to laughter power.
Children who are afraid of “monsters in the closet” may be able to find some comfort in this movie. The monsters overall are portrayed as friendly people, who were only scaring children in order to power their city. The monsters also were just as afraid of the children as they were of the monsters if not more so, which may comfort some children.
This movie may be a little frightening for very young children. Younger viewers may be upset by the lengths that the monsters will go to keep humans and all human paraphernalia out of their world. The monsters are also trying to scare children during the movie, which may inadvertently scare children viewers.
That said this is one of my favorite of Disney’s recent movies. I think that Disney did a fantastic job with this film. It’s one of those DVD’s that I pick up to watch again and again, and it seems to be a crowd pleaser with children of all ages. I have not personally encountered a child that didn’t enjoy the movie.
Monsters Inc is available at most DVD retailers as well as online at Amazon.com