Movie Review: Monsters University (and The Blue Umbrella)

Today  I'll review Pixar/Disney's Monsters University and the short film before it,The Blue Umbrella.

         As always, Pixar has a short film before the beginning of the movie. This one was titled The Blue Umbrella, and it was pretty weird. It was a good weird though. The short takes place on a rainy day in the busy city where (you guessed it) a blue umbrella falls in love with a red umbrella, but they are separated and the blue umbrella must find its way back to her. Mailboxes, rain pipes, and manholes come alive to help the blue umbrella finds its way back to the red one.
        It wasn't the most plot driven short that I've seen from Pixar, but the animation was spectacular. Aside from the umbrella's faces(above), you could not tell whether this short was animated or real. Many of the scenes look as if they were filmed in real life. If you are not thrilled by a love story between two umbrellas like me, you'll at least enjoy the stellar animation of The Blue Umbrella 

          Now to the actual film. Monsters University is Pixars first prequel and they did a great job. This story focuses more on Mike Wasowski, and how he became friends with the hotshot James Sullivan.Without giving anything away, the movie does a great job of showing some of the characters from the first film, and introducing many new characters. It has elements of a typical underdog story and plenty of laughs. The new characters are just as great as the old ones. 8/10