Obviously, this is
a cute movie with amazing animation. That probably wouldn't get its own blog
post. Also, that it is out on DVD / Blu-Ray today is not the reason for the
post. I had been thinking about this one for a while, and then with seeing the
commercials for the release, and with writing about movies yesterday, it seemed
right.
The animation was
great. They talk about Sully's fur, and they are right, but there is so much
more to it than that. The attention to detail was important, and that led to
one of the things I loved - it felt so much like college.
I had just driven
through my old college town the day before I saw it, so I was probably feeling
extra nostalgic, but yes, that feels like a college campus at the beginning of
the term, that feels like a dorm - not just looks, feels! Even, well
technically I did not go to school with any monsters, but some of them were so
familiar! That girl monster running the Scare Games reminded me of a girl I
worked with at the Science Library, except that Roy would never have
done something with the fraternity system. (I think her real name was Melissa,
but I would not recommend calling her that.)
On that level the
movie was very satisfying. It was also surprisingly touching, because it went
somewhere important.
(Spoilers will
follow.)
Mike got the
scaring bug early. The kindness of the one scarer (and the cap) may have
cemented his desire to work the scare floor someday, but he was gung ho before
that, or he would not have ended up on the scare floor on the field trip.
It is worth noting
that his enthusiasm and good nature did not make him at all popular. Maybe
people found the constant focus on scaring tiresome, or him being little and
maybe a little oblivious made him easy to marginalize, but he was underrated
and under-appreciated, a true scare geek. And he was not at all scary.
If the power of
positive thinking was solely sufficient, there would have been no stopping
Mike, because no one was as relentlessly positive as him. It was kind of a
blind spot, actually.
If hard work was
enough, there would have been no stopping him. No one studied harder or trained
harder. It was not enough to make him scary, but he helped other monsters be
scary - other monsters who frankly seemed unlikely to ever succeed at scaring.
He helped create a record breaking scream by creating all of the build-up,
which he could do because he understood fright.
It was also not
enough to keep him enrolled, but that didn't stop him either. He ended up working
at Monsters Inc, he ended up on the scare floor as an assistant to the top
scarer, and he then became an incredibly successful laugh-getter when the
industry changed.
You may not be able
to do everything you set your mind to. There may not be any level of work that
is enough for that thing you want. But there is so much that is available. You
can accomplish so much, and help so much, without maybe even having that in
your sights. So do set goals, and be enthusiastic and kind. Don't give up at
the first sign of resistance. But be ready to change too. Know that there is
more than one good future.
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