This article is about the film. For the in-universe company, see Monsters, Inc. (company).

Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 computer-animated film and the fourth feature-length buddy comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. It was directed by Pete Docter, co-directed by Lee Unkrich and David Silverman, and was written by Jack W. Bunting, Jill Culton, Pete Docter, Ralph Eggleston, Dan Gerson, Jeff Pidgeon, Rhett Reese, Jonathan Roberts, and Andrew Stanton.

The film was released in theaters by Walt Disney Pictures in the United States on November 2, 2001. It was a commercial, box office, and critical success, grossing $562,816,256 worldwide. Rotten Tomatoes also reported positive reviews with a fresh 96% approval rating. The film was re-released in theaters in 3-D on December 19, 2012. A prequel titled Monsters University was released on June 21, 2013 and is also Pixar's only prequel film made to one of their original films.

A television sequel/midquel spinoff series titled Monsters at Work was announced during a Disney press release on November 9, 2017. It was released on Disney+ in July 2021.

The movie opens with a young kid laying in bed, frightened while looking at his closet door. Next thing he knows, beady red eyes appear from under his bed and a monster stands beside him after he rises, snarling while showing his claws. The boy sits up and screams and the scary monster opens his eyes and is instantly startled, walking backwards. He squishes a soccer ball, which hits him in his face, slips on a skateboard, acting like a banana peel, and lands in a pile of sharp jacks. He screams again in dire pain while running in circles, knocking over a dresser drawer, and begins grunting when the jacks try to come right off his backside. Suddenly, alarms go off, lights come on, and when the monster gasps, the boy is still scared, not saying anything and goes back to bed revealing it to be an animatronic, with a backwards movement. The garage doors open, the monster takes the last jack off, and we discover that it is a scaring practice going on in the training room of Monsters, Inc, the power company of Monstropolis. The head of the power company is Mr. Waternoose (James Coburn), who is training new monsters to scare kids. It seems that Monstropolis gets all its power from screams, and he has a whole squad of monsters whose job it is to scare kids at night and collect their screams; however, the city is experiencing an energy crisis, as modern kids are progressively getting harder to scare.

It is a very complicated system they have for collecting the screams. They have a warehouse full of closet doors, and they call up a particular door for whichever room they want. The door is sent by a hanging conveyor belt and placed in front of the monster on the "scare floor". When the door is opened, the monster is in another room in another part of the world. If for any reason there is a problem with that particular room, the door is shredded.

Ironically, monsters are actually more scared of the human kids than the kids are of them, and they believe that even the slightest touch from a human is enough to kill them. If any part of the human world enters the monster world, the CDA (Child Detection Agency) comes in and decontaminates the place and the monster bringing it in.

The top scarer of the company is James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (John Goodman). He is the best in the business. With the help of his assistant Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal), they are about to break the record for most screams collected. In second place on the list of scarers is Randall Boggs (Steve Buscemi), who will stop at nothing to be in first place. One night, Mike is in a hurry to get out since he has a date with his girlfriend Celia Mae (Jennifer Tilly) to celebrate her birthday at a fancy restaurant that he just reserved. He forgets to finish his paperwork though, so Sulley says he will go back in to get it. Sulley goes back to the scare floor, now deserted, except for one door that's still on the floor. Sulley is curious, so he peeks inside the door into a child's room, where no one's inside. Suddenly, he hears a thumping sound caused by his tail, and as he turns around he notices a cute little human girl playing with it, not scared of Sulley at all and in fact, thinks he is cute. Sulley is terrified of her and tries to put her back into her room before anyone finds out. Quickly, he runs out the door, back to the scare floor, and into the bathroom to get as far away from the girl as he can. When he looks into the mirror, however, he discovers that the girl is on his back. Sulley places the girl in a suitcase and takes her back to her door again, but when he goes back to the scare floor, Randall was already there looking in the door, upset that the girl isn't there. He sends the door back to the door vault. Worried, Sulley heads out to Harryhausen's to find Mike. He interrupts Mike and Celia's dinner and shows Mike what he has in the suitcase, but both realize that the girl inside got out, sending the whole restaurant in a panic with the monsters being evacuated. The CDA arrive, and the patrons are panicking and running, terribly fearful of the girl.

Sulley scoops her up, and he, the girl (whom he names Boo) and Mike run to their apartment just before the restaurant in encased in a decontamination dome. They try to hide her as the helicopters are searching outside, but whenever she cries, the lights come on brighter. Though when she laughs, the lights come on super bright. In fact, she laughs so hard once that she blows the fuse to the building. The next day they put a monster costume on Boo and bring her to the factory. Their goal is to find her door and bring her back without anyone noticing. Unfortunately, Randall and Fungus are also there searching for Boo. It made the news about Boo and the restaurant, and they are sure it is their fault.

Eventually, Randall convinces Mike that the door will be there waiting for them if they bring the girl back to the scream floor. Mike tells Sulley this, and right before they enter, Sulley figures out that Randall would never want to help them, so it must be a trap of some kind. Mike thinks he is crazy and runs in and starts jumping on Boo's bed to prove nothing is wrong. Suddenly, a box comes down and traps Mike inside. Sulley hides as Randall, and his assistant take the box to another room in the warehouse.

In the basement, Randall reveals to Mike that he has built a machine called the "Scream Extractor" to forcibly extract children's screams from their lungs (which would make the company's current tactics redundant). Randall straps Mike to the chair for experimentation and starts it up to try not to let him talk, but Sulley unplugs the machine. He then takes Mike and, along with Boo, runs to find Mr. Waternoose. In the Simulation room, Sulley attempts to tell Waternoose what happened, but, Waternoose orders him to give the scare demonstration at the recruits' insistence. Sulley reluctantly does so, but unintentionally frightens Boo. After the recruits leave, The terrified Boo accidentally reveals herself, much to Waternoose's shock. Mike explains everything to him and what Randall was doing. Sulley attempts to comfort Boo, but she is too scared by what she saw. Sulley then sees himself and Boo on the simulator monitors, soon realizing just how wrong scaring children is. Waternoose is proud of the two of them for discovering Randall's evil plan. The most important thing is, however, getting the girl back home. Waternoose calls up Boo's closet door.

Sulley and Mike say that it is the wrong door. Mr. Waternoose says he knows... it is not the door for her, but for them, and with that, he pushes the two through a door that leads them to the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. Waternoose has actually been helping Randall in the plan this whole time. They have been banished from Monstropolis. After a short tussle, Sulley and Mike meet the Abominable Snowman who tells them that there is a village at the bottom of the mountain, which gives Sulley the idea that if they go to the village, all they have to do is to find any kid's closet and return to Monstropolis.

Back to the scare floor and out of a door comes Sulley. In Randall's lair, he and Mr. Waternoose argue over Randall's negligence that forced Waternoose to banish Sulley, feeling regretful about it. Sulley rushes to the secret room, and there, trapped in a chair, is Boo, about to have her screams sucked out. Sulley arrives and destroys the machine, takes Boo, and they rush to the scream floor (along with Mike who also returned from the Himalayas) to get her door with Randall right on their heels. They race from door to door, trying to find a shortcut to Boo's door in the warehouse. Each door they go through takes them to different places throughout the Earth.

After a fierce chase, they finally trap Randall in a door that leads to a trailer in the bayou. The kid in the trailer calls out to his mother that another alligator has come inside, and the boy hands a shovel to his mother, who then clubs the "gator". Once they return to the scare floor, the CDA chases Mike while Waternoose chases Sulley and Boo through a door that appears to be Boo's. Waternoose confronts Sulley and declares that he will do anything to save the company, even if it means kidnapping children. Suddenly, an alarm sounds, and all the lights come on. They are not in Boo's room after all. They are actually in the training room, and Waternoose has just confessed in front of everyone.

They are all shocked, and the CDA arrests Waternoose after hearing his confession. As he is being dragged away, he accuses Sulley of destroying Monsters Inc. and worsening the energy crisis. The actual head of the company was Monsters Inc's dispatcher Roz, who has been undercover for over two and a half years trying to expose Randall and Waternoose's plan. She congratulates Sulley and gets the key to bringing Boo's door down.

Sulley, who has grown quite fond of Boo, tucks her in her own bed, plays with a few of her toys with her, and then goes back to his own world, shutting the door behind him to never see Boo again and turning that door back into Boo's ordinary closet. The door is shredded. Following Waternoose's arrest, the workers are now leaving the factory for the last time. It is permanently closing because kids just cannot be scared anymore. As Mike comments on how the past few days went, Sulley hears him say the word "laughs" and suddenly has an idea of how to save the company.

A couple of days later, Mike entering a kid's closet door. He sits down in front of the kid and starts doing a stand-up routine as a comedian, but to no avail. Mike has had enough and quickly does his final act. He swallows his microphone, waits a few seconds, and then burps loudly, making the kid laugh. As Mike leaves, he checks the power canister, and it is an enormous amount of it to fill the gauge. It turns out that a child's laugh has ten times the power of a child's scream. The factory is saved, the energy crisis is solved, and everyone got their jobs back. However, Sulley is still sad as he still misses Boo. As mementos, he kept one of Boo's drawings and a single piece of her door under some pages on his clipboard. Mike then tells him that he has a surprise.

In the testing room, it is revealed the Mike had re-pieced Boo's door successfully together, in spite of getting wounded from the splinters. As Mike states, all it needs is one more piece. Sulley grabs the final piece from his clipboard, places it into the door, and the light above illuminates. He slowly opens the door and looks to see if Boo is around. Boo then says, "Kitty," and Sulley smiles in delight for seeing Boo once more, which ends the story.

Main article: Monsters (Original Treatment)

The idea for the film started with a lunch in 1994. At this lunch was John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and Joe Ranft. One of the ideas that came out of the brainstorming session was a film about monsters. Docter's original idea revolved around a 30-year-old man dealing with monsters, which he drew in a book as a child, coming back to bother him as an adult. Each monster represented a fear he had and conquering those fears caused the monsters to eventually disappear.

Docter started working on the script in 1996 and with Harley Jessup, Jill Culton, and Jeff Pidgeon completed a draft treatment in February 1997. The initial story did not have the character of Mike Wazowski. He was not added until a story review meeting between Pixar and Disney in April 1998. The film went into production in 2000.

The release of Monsters, Inc. was almost delayed by a lawsuit brought by Lori Madrid against Pixar, Disney and Chronicle Books. The suit alleged the defendants had stolen her story There's a Boy in My Closet, which she had mailed out in October 1999 to a number of publishers, including Chronicle Books. The plaintiffs had requested a temporary injunction against the release of the film. Judge Clarence Brimmer, Jr. had a hearing on the injunction on November 1, 2001, the day before the film was to be released. He judged against the injunction, and the entire suit was thrown out on June 26, 2002.

Another lawsuit by Stanley Mouse alleged that the characters of Mike and Sulley were based on drawings he had tried to sell Hollywood in 1998.

Monsters, Inc. ranked #1 at the box office on its opening weekend, grossing $62,577,067 in North America alone. The film had a small drop-off of 27.2% over its second weekend, earning another $45,551,028. In its third weekend, the film experienced a larger decline of 50.1%, placing itself in the second position just after Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone. In its fourth weekend, however, there was an increase of 5.9%. Making $24,055,001 that weekend, it is the seventh biggest (in US$) fourth weekend ever for a film.

The film made a total of $289,916,256 in the United States and Canada and $287,509,478 in other territories for a worldwide gross of $577,425,734. The film is Pixar's eighth highest-grossing film worldwide and fifth in North America. For a time, the film went on to depose Toy Story 2 as the second highest-grossing animated film of all time, behind only The Lion King.

In the UK, Ireland, and Malta, it earned £37,264,502 ($53,335,579) in total, marking the 6th highest-grossing animated feature of all time in the country and the 32nd largest movie of all time. In Japan, although earning $4,471,902 during its opening and ranking second behind The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring for the weekend, on subsequent weekends it moved to first place due to minimal decreases or even increases and dominated for six weeks at the box office.

It finally reached $74,437,612, standing as the third highest-grossing film of 2002, and it remains the third largest US animated feature of all time in the country behind Toy Story 3 and Finding Nemo.

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 96% based on 195 reviews, with an average score of 8.03/10. The critical consensus was: "Clever, funny, and delightful to look at, Monsters, Inc. delivers another resounding example of how Pixar elevated the bar for modern all-ages animation." Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 79 based on 35 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews."

Charles Taylor from Salon.com stated: "It's agreeable and often funny, and adults who take their kids to see it might be surprised to find themselves having a pretty good time." Elvis Mitchell from The New York Times gave a positive review, praising the film's use of "creative energy": "There hasn't been a film in years to use creative energy as efficiently as Monsters, Inc." Although Mike Clark from USA Today thought the comedy was sometimes "more frenetic than inspired and viewer emotions are rarely touched to any notable degree," he thought the film to be as "visually inventive as its Pixar predecessors."

ReelViews film critic James Berardinelli, who gave the film 3½ stars out of 4 wrote, saying that Monsters, Inc. was "one of those rare family films that parents can enjoy (rather than endure) along with their kids."

Roger Ebert, film critic from Chicago Sun-Times, who gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, called the film "cheerful, high-energy fun, and like the other Pixar movies, has a running supply of gags and references aimed at grownups." Lisa Schwarzbaum, a film critic for Entertainment Weekly, giving the film a B, praised the film's animation, stating "Everything from Pixar Animation Studios, the snazzy, cutting-edge computer animation outfit, looks really, really terrific, and unspools with a liberated, heppest-moms-and-dads-on-the-block iconoclasm."

Main article: Monsters, Inc. (soundtrack)

The score was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score and the song "If I Didn't Have You" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Monsters, Inc. won the Academy Award for Best Song (Randy Newman, after 15 previous nominations, for If I Didn't Have You). It was also nominated for Best Animated Feature (lost to Shrek), and Best Music, Original Score (lost to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring).

On December 7, 2001 – one month after the movie's theatrical release – a version with alternative end credits was brought into theaters. There, the credits are accompanied by a "blooper reel", followed by the musical "Put That Thing Back Where it Came From or So Help Me", performed by the cast. This version can be found as a separate feature on the collector's Edition DVD and in the credits of the VHS and 4:3 fullscreen DVD versions as well as the end credits of the R2-R5 widescreen version for Eastern Europe. As is common for Pixar movies, international versions differ in the contents. Many English inscriptions are either removed or replaced by more generic symbols, especially in Monstropolis and at the Scarefloor. For instance, the "Stalk/Don't Stalk" traffic light is replaced by a green two-headed monster (for "Stalk") and a forbidding red hand (for "Don't Stalk"). Additionally, an animation of Sulley telling Boo to go to sleep was changed for non-English versions, as in the US version, he holds up two fingers to illustrate "to" in "You - go - to - sleep". For the title sequence, language versions that do not use the Latin Alphabet replace the letters W-A-L-T D-I-S-N-E-Y P-I-C-T-U-R-E-S with eyeballs peeking out the doors. Several European DVDs contain only the "international" version, whereas the US DVDs and US/UK VHS and Blu-ray contain the "US" version. Some examples for alternative angles can be seen in the bonus material of the 2-disc DVD and Blu-ray of the film.

The film was re-released in theaters in 3-D on December 19, 2012, and it featured the outtakes in 3-D during the credits just like the the reissued showing.^[8]

Following the 9/11 attacks, Pixar had already finished the movie and began to search the film for anything that would be inappropriate. The scene they ended up changing was the Harryhausen's scene. Following Mike and Sulley getting Boo and fleeing, the scene was supposed to end with Harryhausen's getting blown up in a fireball explosion by the CDA. This was changed in the final film to a large plasma bubble encompassing the building.

Main article: Monsters University

A prequel, Monsters University was released on June 21, 2013. Set in Mike and Sulley's college years, it is about how the two became friends and got their job.

Main article: Monsters, Inc. (video)

A short was made by Pixar in 2002 named Mike's New Car, in which the two main characters have assorted misadventures with a car Mike has just bought. This film was not screened in theaters, but is included with all home video releases of Monsters, Inc.

A manga version of Monsters, Inc. was made by Hiromi Yamafuji and distributed in Kodansha's Comic Bon Bon magazine in Japan; the manga was published in English by Tokyopop until it became out of print.

A series of video games and a multi-platform video game were created, based on the film, such as a film adaptation, Monsters Inc., developed by A2M on PS2, PC, Game Boy Color, and GBA consoles in 2001.

A game was released early 2013 called Monsters, Inc. Run for iOS and Android devices.

Feld Entertainment toured a Monsters, Inc. edition of their Disney on Ice skating tour from 2003 to 2007.

Monsters, Inc. has inspired three attractions and a future themed land at Disney theme parks around the world.

During the scene where Mike and Sulley walk to work, that day's Monstropolis Horn is shown in a vending machine. With the Blu-ray release of the movie, the articles on the front page are just legible enough to recognize that the same text was used for both the "Scream Shortage Looms" and "Modern Kids Harder to Scare".

This is the first Pixar film to have a specific name source (since the studio's first three films do not specify each of their titular derivations), and in this case, it's from the namesake fictional company itself.

During the part where Mike was proposing several ideas on how to get rid of Boo, one of them is using an enormous wooden horse, but he instantly rejected it since he thought that it was "too Greek". This is actually in reference to the Trojan horse, where according to legend, some Greek soldiers hid themelves inside the aforementioned wooden horse, which was then intended to be brought inside the city of Troy, in order for them to win the Trojan War.

Once Randall knew that Sulley has outbeaten him after the scaring competition, he infuriatingly states to Fungus that "if [Randall doesn't] see a new door at [his] station in five seconds, [he] will personally put [Fungus] through [a] shredder." This is a reference to the 1996 film Fargo, which Steve Buscemi stars in, in which a notable moment in that film is when Buscemi's character, Carl Showalter, was put through a woodchipper by his former partner-in-crime Gaear Grimsund.

• The toy plane from Toy Story appeared on the top left on the shelf in the little boy's bedroom at the beginning.
• A sticker of a beaver from Toy Story 2 appears on a child's door after Randall comes out of it. The beaver is a critter from Woody's Roundup.
• The Roly Poly Clown from Toy Story appears in the Laugh Floor near the end of the movie.
• Rex appears in the outtakes.

Goofs

• In the Scare Simulator, the "J" is backwards.
• The sock on George's back during his first appearance is not present until his partner sees it.
• In the scene where Mr. Waternoose ejects the door to the child's bedroom in the simulation room, the English Audio Description narrator states that Boo's door is being ejected into the vault, but the door isn't hers.
• Sulley stuffs all of Boo's things in one of the lockers, including her blanket from her bed, then they end up on George when he opens it, but during the movie when Boo's Room is seen, all of her stuff is suddenly back.
• When Jerry starts counting down from seven, the audio of him saying "one" is missing.

External links