Things I love about Monsters University

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.