Monsters University Review - Pixar Scares Up Some Laughs, Twists and a Lot of Fun

*This review is largely spoiler free, and most plot-details mentioned are evident in the trailers, but read cautiously if you haven’t seen the film yet*

Pixar are the gold standard of animation. Once upon a time that was Disney, and if all stays as is it might well be again sometime in the near future, but since 1995, Pixar have been fully leading the animation revolution. We've gone from a time when Disney was more or less the only source of feature animation, to a time when there's about a dozen mainstream animation studios. That's thanks to Pixar. Toy Story was a complete game-changer - revolutionary both visually and thematically - and since then the studio have created classics like The Incredibles and Up. Since 2011 and Cars 2 though, it seems faith in the studio has been broken: that film was widely panned, Brave got a much harsher reception than it deserved, and their fourteenth feature film, Monsters University, has been received - while rather more warmly than the previous two films - to a kind of glum acceptance unfitting of a Pixar film.

An editorial Munir wrote recently has stayed with me; Pixar haven't lost a step, they're not slumping, they're not making poor films, but it is undeniable that their last three films aren't their greatest. The key line, I thought, was "Toy Story 3 is Pixar's Lion King," meaning, once you have reached the absolute pinnacle of creative, critical and commercial success, there's nowhere to go but down. So, while Monsters University is not Pixar's finest film, while it's not as good or as groundbreaking as Monsters, Inc. was 12 years ago, it is still a fine piece of cinema, a testament to great storytelling, and proof that Pixar isn't going anywhere fast.

Striking New Concept Art from The Blue Umbrella

Monsters University is sure to be a hit when it opens this summer: it's a follow-up to one of Pixar's most beloved films and is getting strongly positive reviews thus far. What's making the whole idea even more tantalising, though, is Saschka Unseld's visually arresting, thematically sweet short film, The Blue Umbrella.

UPDATED: Pixar Unveil Title and First Look for Next Short: The Blue Umbrella

For a while now, a Tumblr site, Rainy City Tales 332 (there's a Twitter account too), has been teasing us with little bits and pieces from what it soon transpired was Pixar's next short film. We managed to glean that the short would revolve around umbrellas and involve the Toy Story studio's usual penchant for animated inanimate objects and had assumed it would precede this summer's Monsters University in cinemas. But that was it. Now, The Wall Street Journal has the low-down on the short, which is called The Blue Umbrella!