11. “Monsters University” (2013)
A movie that already feels instantly underrated, this college-set prequel to the beloved “Monsters, Inc.” (more on that in a minute) shows us what it was like when Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sulley (John Goodman) weren’t the best of pals but were, in fact, mortal enemies. The movie uses “Animal House” and “Midnight Madness” as its template, with the two monsters forced into a loser fraternity (Oozma Kappa) so that they can compete in a series of Greek games. Thematically there’s a lot going on, with the movie’s principle concern being the fact that, even though you may wish and dream and hope against hope, you might not accomplish what you want to in life. It’s kind of an abrasive message for a kids movie, especially one filled with candy-colored monsters that look like fuzzy fanged Muppets. Crystal and Goodman slip back into their roles with ease, and the movie investigates the dynamics of heterosexual male friendship with surprisingly subtlety. Oh, and it’s also incredibly funny. Critics have already begun dismissing “Monsters University” as an unequal follow-up, but for bizarre comic inventiveness, it stands comfortably alongside the original. (Where it pales in comparison is in the first film’s raw emotionality; although there are a few heart-tugging moments in this one too.) It might not be a sequel that anybody was asking for, but we’re sure glad it’s here.
10. “A Bug’s Life” (1998)
Borrowing its template from “The Seven Samurai,” this adventurous follow-up to the paradigm-shifting “Toy Story” is a widescreen retelling of the grasshopper and the ant fable. Except this time the ant is a neurotic inventor (Dave Foley) and the grasshopper is the leader of a ruthless biker game (Kevin Spacey). When the ant goes away to the big city to recruit warriors to combat the villainous grasshoppers, he ends up hiring a bunch of circus performers (including David Hyde Pierce, Madeline Kahn, Jonathan Harris and Denis Leary). The Pixar team was still relatively small when “A Bug’s Life” was completed, and much of the creative team (including director John Lasseter) went straight from “Toy Story” into “A Bug’s Life.” Not that this kind of fatigue shows. If anything, it makes the movie, with dozens of principle characters and expansive crowd sequences, even more impressive. (Famously, Pixar re-framed the complex crowd sequences for the full frame home video, something that now seems like an incredible waste of time.) “A Bug’s Life” is colorful and often quite funny (it introduced the credit sequence “bloopers” that would become a mainstay of Pixar movies for a little while), but lacks emotional resonance. More a dazzling technical achievement than a storytelling tour de force, it none-the-less proved that the computer-animated feature, more adept at crafting geometrically perfect structures, could capture the outdoors in a naturalistic way.
9. “Toy Story 2” (1999)
One of the rare sequels that is just as good as the original, “Toy Story 2” started life as a direct-to-video sequel that the studio was producing on the down low. When John Lasseter and Disney executives saw the quality of the story, they decided it could be a theatrical release, and Lasseter stepped in to massively overhaul the movie in a little over a year, which is unheard of for an animated film, especially a computer animated film (this was still during the technology’s infancy). “Toy Story 3” deepened the original film’s “mythology” by exploring Woody’s origins – as a highly valuable tie-in for a long lost “Howdy Doody“-type television show, and introduced a second Buzz Lightyear (still Tim Allen), who was just as delusional as Buzz was in the first film. The sequel hedged pretty closely to the original from a structural standpoint (with an obsessive toy collector standing in for the abusive kid next door, and an elaborate runway chase replacing the moving van chase from the first film) but offered some nice new flourishes, the best of which being the introduction of the cowgirl Jesse (Joan Cusack) character, whose tragic backstory makes for a moving, Sarah McLachlan-sung musical interlude. Many elements of the sequel, including the fantastical videogame-world opening and the more adult themes of loss and memory, would be expanded upon and perfected in the following film. But at the time, “Toy Story 2” was as close to a peerless follow-up as you could have asked for – visually, thematically, and emotionally rich.
