Fav Films – Animation – Part 1

My three picks for animated features: Monsters, Inc. (2001), Ratatouille (2007) and Surf’s Up (2007).

This is an interesting genre: over the years, there was a large gap from the 60s to 80s in which there weren’t many quality animated pictures were getting made by the major studios. Then Disney came out with The Little Mermaid in 1989, and animated films become in vogue again.

What’s even the more surprising was how quickly hand-drawn animated films got surpassed by 3D computer-generated animation, beginning from Toy Story in 1995. Nowadays, there’s a glut of 3D animated films left right center, and nicely most of them are Ok to pretty good.

Of the lot though, I think I’ve gone with what aren’t really universal favorites. Many people would have selected Finding Nemo for instance as the best Pixar effort to date. Nemo was OK for me, but I don’t know. I didn’t find the story or premise that special – it was ultimately a road trip movie where a father Clownfish looks for his missing child, with turtles, sharks on a mission of good behavior, and a forgetful dory thrown somewhere into the mix.

The very recent WALL-E was also very well-received, but I thought the film was spoilt by the dominant inclusion of large humans into the story from the midpoint onwards. The film’s story should had centered squarely on EVE and WALL-E.

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So what’s so special of the three I’ve chosen then? Well, Monsters, Inc. had a great premise. The story’s about monsters in an alternative universe who come into our own world and scare children just so in order that theirs can survive.

Now, it would had been easy for the monsters to come from some wretched underworld of Hades. But Monstropolis is anything but such. It’s a modern, highly urban city where the monster scarers are all professionals, and their world is like ours: bosses, rivals, girlfriends, and Japanese food LOL.

And in a story twist: it’s the monsters who when in their own world are terrified of little children! Too funny for words.:)

Best of all for me though was that the two monster leads had incredible chemistry, helped in no small part by some of the best voice acting ever. Sulley and Mike, portrayed by John Goodman and Billy Crystal, for me have been the best buddy pair in animation – even better than the Woody and Buzz / Tom Hanks and Tim Allen pairing from the two Toy Story films.

There’s apparently a Monsters, Inc. 2 in the works – oh yes!!!

Continued in the next post.:)