The first two episodes of the new Disney+ series 'Monsters at Work' have arrived!
The spin-off picks up the day after the first 'Monsters' film, as Mike & Sulley (Billy Crystal & John Goodman) are now put in charge of running Monsters Incorporated.
To be honest, as exciting as seeing Mike & Sulley again is, for me the most thrilling part is being back inside the Monsters Inc factory again, something we didn't really get in the prequel...
The new guy, Tylor Tuskman (Ben Feldman) has just graduated MU and finds himself in a business that no longer needs Scarers and is re-assigned to the Monsters Inc. Facilities Team; MIFT, for short. There he meets Val (Mindy Kaling), Fritz (Henry Winkler), Cutter, (Alanna Ubach), and Duncan (Lucas Neff) and, very reluctantly, joins their weird family.
Other favorite characters return: Celia Mae (Jennifer Tilly), Prof. Knight (Alfred Molina), Roz (Bob Peterson), Mrs. Flint (Bonnie Hunt), and even the "extras" that fill in the corners of the factory are familiar faces from either 'Monsters, Inc.' or 'Monsters University'.
My ONLY criticism (if you could even call it that) is that Goodman and Crystal did not record together like they did for the original film. Separating the actors (which is standard Voice-Over practice, I know...) seems to affect their character's dynamic in ways that stand out to someone like me who ABSORBED every second of the original movie 20 (GULP!) years ago...
Pixar stories, especially the ones I grew up on, still have the ability to make me completely forget my surroundings, and mentally regress to a time where all I had to worry about were characters like Mike & Sulley or Woody & Buzz and their troubles; and this series absolutely did that for me again, these two new twenty-five minute episodes really flew by. There are plenty of references and cameos from the OG film to keep those of us who grew up on 'Monsters' more than happy, and with new episodes dropping every Wednesday for the next few weeks, I'm happy to be visiting Monstropolis again for a little while...
More soon,
Avery
