Monsters University is an underrated pixar movie

we were looking for a non-typical halloween movie to watch with our little boy yesterday and pulled this out.

wife immediately gets on her phone and is like 'i'm not watching, y'all enjoy' and 2 minutes later she put it down and watched the entire thing.

why is it so great? it reminds me of the way colleges used to be. NO agenda. this movie is just good storytelling and (SPOILERS BELOW) they nailed so much of the college experience.

- first scene showing why mike wanted to go to that college
- first scene arriving on campus and the hacky-sack & frisbee players in the quad; the hippies everything
- the darwinian attempt to get accepted by the 'cool frat on campus' and the absolute pitiful way they showed the un-cool geek frat
- the scary dean and the way she immediately kicked them out for fricking around in the class..quick and no mercy.
- the 'scare games' were great; that librarian and realistic as to how they fricked up trying to win
- the hazing scene (with mom coming down to wash clothes LOL)
- scully being a complete frick up (not even bringing a pencil to class) and trying to make it just on his name
- the evolution of Randy from impressionable freshman to the villian he became in Monsters Inc was totally believable
- mike sneaking them into the monsters factory to give them motivation to win
- and ultimately, you were expecting them to win and get back in school..nope. they got kicked out. they had to take a job in the mailroom at the end of the movie and try to work their way up to being scarers.

anyway, i thought it was a solid movie and i wasn't particularly excited about another 'sequel' that didn't seem to be needed but this is definitely a hidden gem in the pixar universe. sad everything has to be underlined with some kind of woke subtext these days we can't just get a great story.