Monsters made with adults in mind

Toy Story parts one and two, and A Bugs Life are hard acts to follow but the Disney/Pixar combo may just have hit upon another winning formula. Enter the bizarre but very real world of Monsters Inc.

It tells the story of a group of monsters who all work at Monsters Incorporated, a company where the employees get paid to scare children. Why? Well, the actual reason for the monsters' activities isn't sinister at all - it's simply a stroke of genius and my lips are sealed! If you want to know you'll have to go and see the film.

What I can tell you, is that the way the monsters get from their world into ours, technically speaking, is highly imaginative and a great bit of ingenuity. And there's no imagination spared on any part of this film, which is packed full of comic gems from the moment we meet the monsters, headed up by fast talking 'Mike' and the company's best 'scarer', Sulley. Voiced to perfection by Billy Crystal and John Goodman, these two fabulous characters are so believable that you forget you're looking at a one-eyed, oversized pea and a gigantic blue fur ball. What makes it all seem so real are the clever comparisons with human life which are constantly thrown into the soup.

Every character is hilarious, especially the nastier ones of the bunch, and along with an excellent story line, which has it's fair share of twists and turns, I don't see how this film can fail to delight.

Things to watch out for include, the brilliantly subtle jokes which constantly appear in the background, the countless references to other films and, of course, the end credits. The out takes are excellent and it would be a crime to leave the cinema before the last name has left the screen.

Even if monsters aren't really your bag or you're afraid of those things that go bump in the night, simply think of Monsters Inc as movie therapy because by the end, you can't help but love 'em.

Nigel Mitchell is one of the Disney Channel's regular presenters. Catch him on Studio Disney daily from 3pm to 7pm.

Monsters, Inc.
Cert: U