Monsters University

This was a very good film.
It begins when Mike (Noah Johnston as a child, Billy Crystal as an adult) goes on a field trip to visit Monsters, Inc. He falls in love with scaring. It becomes his life goal to be a top scarer.
Eventually, he goes to Monsters University, but his brilliance is overlooked by the reputation and family name of James T. Sullivan (John Goodman). Sully, as his friends call him, has the natural ability but refuses to open a book to study so his grades are horrible while Mike excels at cracking a book to study so his grades are fantastic.
When its time for the final to see if everyone will be able to stay in the program, Sully and Mike get into a fight which knocks over the record scream canister. The Dean of the School (Helen Mirren), who holds the record, is furious but immediately gives them a scenario to see if they pass. They both fail: Mike because he cannot scare and Sully because he didn't use the right technique.
Mike won't give up on his dream so he decides to join the school wide competition: the Scare Games, joining the weakest fraternity with a band of misfits: Don, the older former salesman (Joel Murray), the twins: Terri and Terry (Sean Hayes and Dave Foley), the extreme oddball Squishy (Peter Sohn) and Art (Charlie Day). Because they need six members, Sully also joins the team, forcing him and Mike to become roommates and get along with each other. Teamwork is not something that they do, at first, and its only a miracle, and another team being disqualified from the competition to keep them in the Games.
After that, they start realizing that they have to pull together and use their differences to their advantages. Still, the other fraternities think they are a joke and make fun of them. Yet, they continue winning the events and advance to the finals.
However, this is when they actually have to scare a fake child so Sully insists that Mike go last. The two teams are neck and neck, but Mike manages to get a good scream out of the fake child. However, the truth is soon revealed:: Sully rigged the game so the child would scare easily. Mike is devastated that he doesn't have the gift of natural scarer.
He is determined for this to be broken so he gets an actual door and goes in to scare a child, but this backfires horribly causing Sully to go in and rescue him. They break all the rules and the Dean is furious and waits for the authorities as everyone knows that children are toxic. Though they manage to escape, but barely, the two are kicked out of the college. The Dean does have some kind words for Mike, saying she wished more students would surprise her, just as he did.
The two decide to remain teammates and start off at the bottom of Monsters, Inc and gradually work their way up, leading into the first movie, released more than a decade ago.
The film is quite good, with good twists and turns and some fun jokes tucked in between. The only problem I had was that I found the part where Mike and Sully hide out in the human world to be far-fetched and creepy for a somewhat light-hearted film. My friend did also point out that despite appearing in trailers, Mike is never actually turned into a disco ball, though that could have easily happened, given the fraternity's disco ball crashed from the ceiling. Still, a great film which sets up nicely to Monsters, Inc. Another problem is that the film lacked a true villain, though Mirren had her moments. Randy also appeared but he and Mike were friends, shocker. Grade: A-