Pretty Good

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

I have to say I quite enjoyed the two Monster's films so far, also the new one about university life. This one tells us a bit more about partying on the campus. Mike and Sully use one of these portal doors to lure the guests from another party to their party. The antagonists are once again this other sorority with the cool guys. Unfortunately the humor is not too great in these 5 minutes here. The only thing I found funny about this one was the mom, who seems so harmless and then proves to be a huge party animal. Still, it's all fairly generic and predictable and lacks the charm of the feature films. Kelsey Mann directed this one and many of the famous Pixar directors started working on short films. If he becomes one of them, I truly hope he can step things up soon. Not a great watch by any means. The only somewhat good thing is that they got all the actors from the "real" films to appear in here as well. Still that's almost a given these days. Loud yes. Interesting nope. Thumbs down.

This Pixar short, which takes place not long after Monster University, concerns a frat party that Mike and Sully organize for their friends. The 5 minutes that this runs for has a nice premise for such length and provides a funny enough ending. Nice to hear the entire cast for MU here especially Billy Crystal and John Goodman as those characters I mentioned at the beginning of this review. Since I need 10 lines for this to be submitted on this site, I'll also mention when I watched this with my movie theatre-working friend, the auditorium lights were on for a few minutes which marred the experience a bit but by the time of the climax, it was dark enough and made the final gag such a great surprise! So on that note, me and my friend very much liked Party Central.

'PARTY CENTRAL': Three Stars (Out of Five) The second Pixar animated short in the 'MONSTERS, INC.' film series. It takes place shortly after 'MONSTERS UNIVERSITY' and tells the story of Mike and Sully (once again voiced by Billy Crystal and John Goodman) helping their Oozma Kappa frat brothers throw a party. They come up with the plan of using a 'door station' to sneak into parties, at other fraternities, and steal guests and refreshments (while passing them through the bedroom of a sleeping couple). It also features the voice talents of actors Sean Hayes, Dave Foley, Charlie Day, Joel Murray, Julia Sweeney and Peter Sohn and was written and directed by longtime storyboard artist Kelsey Mann. It's 5 minutes long and plays in theaters before 'MUPPETS MOST WANTED'. I found it to be amusing enough but not up to par with what I usually expect from most Pixar short films. I have seen a lot worse animated movies though and I'm sure most fans of the 'MONSTERS, INC.' franchise will enjoy it.Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2NdCvPRYk4

. . . the short that also ran this month before the MR. PEABODY AND SHERMAN cartoon feature. That piece of c*&$, titled ABOUT HOME, was so embarrassingly deficient in entertainment value and so widely castigated on this site and others, that no one even is allowed to review it anymore anywhere on the internet (except in a back-door sort of way, like this). That's because of a series of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions which state that only DOLLARS have free speech rights in today's America, NOT people (this is sometimes referred to as the "Money Talks Doctrine"). PARTY CENTRAL is so much better than ABOUT HOME because it has a beginning (Mike & Sully's frat pledge party is a dud), middle (let's steal someone else's party through the clever use of monster-to-human doorways), and end (Greatest Frat Party EVER!!). It even has a "denoument" (to satisfy any Francophiles in the audience), with Timmy's parents complaining to their son that they have monsters in their closet. Six thumbs up! (Too bad the MUPPETS MOST WANTED feature which followed PARTY CENTRAL was not quite as good.)