Mike Wazowski!

I hadn't watched Monsters, Inc. since its original run in theaters. Hard to believe, but that was a decade ago; that's more than enough time for me to forget exactly why I liked it and only remember that generally, I did. So as part of the "sprucing up the top 100 movie list" project, I decided to give my DVD copy a spin.

I must confess that by about 15 minutes into the film, I was beginning to think "wow, I may have just been totally blinded by this movie the first time around." It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. I don't think I'm normally so impatient with a movie, but Pixar films are typically just 90 minutes long. To be this far in and be thinking, "I guess this maybe wasn't so charming, so funny, so great..." Well, it was a disappointing feeling.

Then the character of Boo shows up. And from there, the movie shifts into high gear. Somehow, this charming little girl -- actually voiced by a two-year-old -- was the last spice in the recipe to make it all click. Suddenly, the movie really is charming and funny, and sweet, heart-felt, whimsical, clever -- countless other things.

Billy Crystal and John Goodman give excellent vocal performances, and have a wonderful interplay with one another -- a particularly impressive feat when you consider their voices were recorded separately. There are also great turns by Steve Buscemi, James Coburn, and of course, Pixar-staple John Ratzenberger.

I don't count this against the film in any way, but I found it interesting to see just how far Pixar has advanced computer animation in the last decade. You can tell that the new boundary they were really pushing at the time was "hair." The fur on Sully realistically moves in the wind, gathers snow, and more. But this film was still before The Incredibles, Ratatouille -- Pixar films with major human characters, that required them to tackle the frontier of "skin." Boo's animation is an absolutely believable embodiment of a toddler, but her look is closer to a plastic toy than a person.

I rate the film an A-. It's still wonderful, but didn't quite blow me away the way I remember the first time around. Maybe that's because of the even better movies Pixar has done in the decade since, and maybe that's not entirely fair, but there it is.