The equivalent of a fountain of youth, Monsters, Inc. offers the chance to remember what it was like to giggle. Indeed, as part of the ingenious plot, giggling is fuel. Turns out those creepy creatures who sneak out of bedroom closets to scare children are actually employees of Monsters, Inc., which harvests screams for their energy potential. When a little girl follows one such monster back through her closet to Monstropolis, chaos erupts (turns out the monsters are actually scared of kids). John Goodman and Billy Crystal provide the voices for this Pixar product, which is largely a very clever chase sequence elevated by a brilliant climax. The grand finale is set in a giant warehouse that stores the closet doors from every child’s bedroom on earth. As the characters chase each other in and out of them – popping up in Paris one moment, Hawaii the next – the movie becomes a giddy, kiddie inversion of time and space.
