Whoa! Hollywood Let A Free Market Film Slip Through: Monsters University
At the end of the film, both Wazowski and Sully get expelled from Monsters University. Both students sit waiting for a bus to take them back to their homes while contemplating their futures. Prospects look grim until they realize, “they’re always hiring in the mail room” (an option that was mocked by one of the students earlier in the film). Not content with failure, the two go to work in the mail room of Monsters Inc., the company entrusted to collect human screams, who are the main employers of Scarers. The film ends on a montage of Wazowski and Sully working their way up the company from mailroom workers, to janitors, to cafeteria workers, excelling in all of their positions until they finally become Scarers.
Not only am I thrilled with the message of this film, but with the wide generational reach of it as well. Monsters University is a prequel to the popular 2001 film Monsters, Inc. Instead of making a sequel to the film, the filmmakers decided to make a movie that would speak to the current lives and experiences of the children the original movie first entertained back in 2001. Monsters University has seen an amazing turnout from not only young children, but from sentimental college students who want to revisit one of their favorite childhood movies as well. The extraordinary thing about this movie is that it reaches not only children with its message of free markets and entrepreneurship, but current college students as well.
Given this information, we can see that the film candidly tells today’s college students that the gates to opportunity are not unlocked by some meaningless degree, but with hard work and persistence. The protagonists of the film get to realize their dreams, not because they continue with their education, but because they drop out of the Harvard of their world and become hard working janitors. The film damns the ordinary and the adversarial characters to a sultry and vapid life in the university, and rewards the extraordinary characters who take risks to become entrepreneurs.
The fact that the film speaks to me as a self-starter and a supporter of the free markets would not have been enough to inspire me to write this review of it. In addition to its amazing and unique message, the film is extremely entertaining, and boasts a depth that should make most major Hollywood directors embarrassed. Whether you are a parent with young children, or you are someone who just wants to see a good movie, I recommend everyone go out and see this film. You won’t regret the ticket price to see a beautiful and entertaining reincarnation of the American dream.
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Image: Poster for Pixar’s 2013 animated feature film Monsters University; Author or copyright owner: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; fair use
Patrick is a political activist based out of Boulder Colorado. He is currently employed by several of Colorado’s preeminent think tanks and has worked in the liberty movement since he was fourteen. An aspiring writer, Patrick currently writes for Girls Just Want To Have Guns and Complete Colorado Page Two.
