Monsters Inc. begins with a simple premise: there are monsters hiding in children’s closets at night trying to scare them. But why are they there, and how did they get there? We get a creative answer to that question: the monsters enter children’s bedrooms through closet door portals to scare children to make them scream because a child’s scream is full of energy, and they collect that energy to keep the lights on, heat their homes and run their cars. They’re not really scary; they just act that way because it’s their job. In reality, the monsters are a collection of ordinary, well-meaning creatures with really bizarre biology and hilariously disgusting tastes. In a comedic twist, the not-so-scary monsters are actually afraid of the human children they are supposed to scare because they’ve been mistakenly led to believe that human beings are toxic and aggressively hostile, and they go to ludicrous extremes to decontaminate anyone who gets exposed to children or any of their possessions, meaning that scaring a dangerous profession. However, while monsters work very hard to scare children and extract screams, there is an energy shortage because children are getting more difficult to scare because they don’t think the monsters are scary; even the monsters think the new scare recruits aren’t very scary. Sully tells his best friend, roommate and work partner Mike not to drive his car and walk to work because of the shortage even though Mike really wants to drive it, and a newspaper headline says that prices double at the pump. The monsters work as hard as they can but they’re concerned they’re not going to generate enough screams to get by.

At work, the blue and hirsute James P. Sullivan is the top scarer, but when he’s off-duty he’s actually gentle and conscientious. When he sees Boo for the first time he assumes she is dangerous and is terrified of her, but takes her into his charge because he doesn’t want her running loose where she might get caught. Within a short time, Sully realizes that Boo isn’t actually dangerous or toxic, but she is an energetic troublemaker. Boo is too young to speak coherently but she is able to express herself clearly enough through emotional facial expressions and some surprisingly good drawings for her state of development, and Sully is able to understand her well enough to figure out how to comfort her and provide for her needs. Boo and Sully actually make a cute match; Boo earns her nickname because she enjoys pretending to scare people because she thinks it’s funny, and later when Sully accompanies her to the bathroom to help her use the toilet, he also pretends to scare her in a playful manner. While Sully isn’t married and doesn’t have any children of his own and Mike just wants to get rid of Boo so he doesn’t have to deal with her, Sully grows attached to Boo very quickly and is fiercely protective of her to the point where he gets really scared when he thinks Boo is lost or might be in danger, he gets really sad when he is convinced that Boo has been crushed into a cube of garbage, and is so relieved that she’s safe that the daycare teacher admires him for being such a caring new father. His instincts are to keep her close and it’s very touching when he has to let her go, even though he loves Boo and Boo loves him.

Boo loves Sully because he’s big and cuddly, but she is afraid of Randall, the monster assigned to scare her. Randall also is responsible for trying to kidnap her as part of a larger evil plot to increase scream energy output. During a demonstrative scare session, Boo becomes afraid of Sully because he bares his teeth and roars loudly like a scary monster does and Sully feels ashamed for frightening her. However, being able to transform into an absolute beast very much comes in handy when Sully has to go on a tear to rescue a kidnapped Boo from a scream extraction machine. Later, when Sully is in danger and Randall has Boo cornered, Boo stops cowering and finds the courage to confront her monster head-on by emulating what she has seen Sully do; act like a scary monster. She goes from being scared to being the scarer.

After Mike and Sully bust the secret plot to kidnap human children to remedy the scream shortage, Mike points out that sending Boo home safely and bringing the bad guys to justice is a good thing, but the consequences are that the power plant will close, everyone who works at the plant will get laid off and there will still be an energy shortage. Fortunately, Sully has discovered that children’s laughter contains more energy than scream and the monsters who were once so bad at being scary are so good at being goofy that they’re better suited for comedy anyway. The company continues to run smoothly and everyone goes to work happy.

Pixar does an excellent job building its premise and crafts an entire world that looks similar to our own, except populated by monsters. The infrastructure of the city streets and the power plant that the monsters work at are designed accordingly in a way that feels detailed and tangible, like these monsters actually live and work in this city. There are an abundance of humorous visual gags and puns that build on the premise; kids jump rope with an extra long tongue, a monster sneezes and breathes fire on his newspaper and a slime creature accidentally oozes into a grate, leaving his dentures behind. The restaurant serves diesel alongside coffee, the produce is sold at the “grossery”, and instead of Don’t Walk signs, there are Don’t Stalk signs. Combine all this along with Billy Crystal’s comedic performance as the goofball Mike Waszowski rapidly firing hilarious dialogue and slapstick, a running gag where Mike is always just out of the frame in photographs [except, ironically, in the newspaper where Randall finds out Mike was at the sushi bar where Boo was spotted] and a cast full of creatures who are funny to look at with amusing mannerisms and Monsters Inc. is really a laugh-a-minute riot. You could probably run a city on the laughs generated by a theater full of people watching this movie.

Animation-wise, it does look a little dated. Monsters Inc. was cutting-edge when it was made: it’s a step above the original Toy Story with its improved use of lighting and textures and how it renders more realistic-looking hair, especially since the main character is covered in it. However, after watching Pixar’s more modern visual stunners, a lot of the props and sets just look like plastic toys and the monsters who aren’t covered in hair or scales move like people stomping around in shiny rubber suits. It’s an ugly-duckling stage of computer animation, but it doesn’t look so distracting that the movie isn’t still enjoyable.

Some remarks:

Before he is about to go on a date with Celia, Mike cracks a joke that he is so romantic that he could marry himself. In 2001, that was a joke because we all knew it was absurd, even in the monster world. Here in the future, people have actually tried to marry themselves because wokeness has made reality absurd.

Sully tells Mike that Boo can’t stay in the men’s locker room. Mike replies that this is the weirdest thing Sully has ever said. Shortly after, Sully has to accompany Boo to the toilet because she’s not old enough to be fully potty trained. I’ve seen real fathers do this sort of thing all the time. If Bandit Heeler can accompany his daughter Bingo into a public restroom on a children’s program like Bluey, then Sully can do the same for Boo.