167 - Monsters University

    Young green "eyeball with legs" Mike meets with young Sullivan at Monsters University, where they compete against each other, then work with each other to get re-admitted to the Scare program.
    I remember liking Monsters, Inc, but I never really loved it.  It was fun, but I think I remember feeling like the last act kind of dragged on.  Remarkably, I actually liked this much more than I expected to.
    While the first movie was a pretty straightforward Disney adventure, this borrows so much from the college atmosphere that it feels more interesting to me.  This has some oddities as well, since so much of the story is actually predictable, but transplanting it into the monster universe is what makes it work.
    The relationship between Mike and Sully isn't all that interesting.  It's a pretty normal path.  The other fraternity brothers are filler, like they are in other movies.
    Maybe I should point out the things that I liked.  The designs are generally great.  There are a lot of filler monsters, but there are also some awkward designs that pay off very well.  Eye stalks are usually very funny.  The strangeness of the designs means that there is usually some really interesting movement.  This is especially true for one of the frat brothers, who mostly seems to be an arched pair of legs, with eyes and a mouth in the middle.  The most boring design is pretty clearly Sully.
    One of the other things that stuck out was the quality of the music.  There was a lot of very fun music, and it never sounded too derivative.  I was pleased to see that Randy Newman wrote the score, since it sounded stronger than some of his earlier work.