The Movie: This movie is just too cute for its own good. As always, the animation from Pixar is absolutely stunning, but unlike some other 100% computer animated movies with impressive looking graphics (*cough* Final Fantasy *cough*), Pixar's movies always have placed a lot of emphasis on a strong story so that the "wow" factor of the animation isn't the only thing keeping you interested in this movie.

Monsters, Inc. is a hilarious movie that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike on many different levels. The story is remarkably well developed, with a rich, highly detailed vision of just what a monster world would be like. In this world, monsters are not inherently scary, they're just trying to make an honest living, making the best of their tough times just the way humans do.

Plenty of slapstick humor for the kids, and references for the adults to pick out, a great story, and cutting edge animation come together to form a wonderful movie for young and old alike. Check it out, if you haven't already!

The DVD: This is the most amazing DVD production I have ever seen. You get the sense that they spent almost as much effort putting this 2 disc set together as they did in making the movie!

I'll start out with the video. Before this DVD, I used to use the whale segment of Fantasia 2000 to show off what my TV can do, but this DVD just blows that away. The direct digital to digital conversion has got perfect, razor sharp clarity that shows off every detail of every rich texture and surface in this movie, with wonderful, brilliant, vibrant color unlike any I've ever seen on a television screen. There's no edge enhancement here to try to give the illusion of detail, this is just full on 100% amazing detail. Some of the parts looked so three dimensional, I felt like I could walk up to my screen and grab one of those furry guys. If you have a higher end television set... definitely check out this DVD to be blown away by just what it can really do! Now, all this being said, I did notice some gradient stepping in the compression, but the combined qualities of the video on this disc are so far beyond what you usually see on DVD that despite that shortcoming, I still want to give the video quality on this disc a rating of 5.

Now on to aspect ratios. You can choose between widescreen and 4:3 versions of this movie. For the widescreen version, you get the original theatrical 1.85:1 ratio in anamorphic widescreen format. For the 4:3, rather than giving you a hacked up pan and scan version, you get a specially recomposed 4:3 version where each shot was redone at the source to fit naturally in the smaller frame, so you don't miss any details. This is something that Pixar has done a number of times on its DVD releases, and shows just how much dedication they have to making sure everyone gets only the best.

The Dolby Digital EX soundtrack is almost as amazing as the video, with crisp and clear sound quality coupled with a fully detailed surround mix with an amazing amount of detail in the placement of each and every sound effect in the surround field.

Yes, attention to detail seems to be the key concept on this DVD set and it doesn't just stop with the actual movie experience. The menu design goes far beyond "animated movie themed menus", with an interface design that is almost on par with the actual feature film. The list of special features is far too long to list in its entirety, but aside from audio commentary tracks, an isolated sound effects track, deleted scenes, and the other kinds of extras you find on many "special editions", the behind the scenes stuff is a virtual digital animation school covering every stage of production. You also get a ton of little features including games. It would take the better part of a day to explore the entire contents of the second disc, and the content is all top notch.

In short, this is the absolute best I've ever seen in DVD production in terms of the quality of the movie experience, the quality of the special features, and the overall attention to detail. They did not skimp on anything here. For those with fancy home theater systems, I highly recommend this disc even if you don't like the movie, for no other reason than to just be able to show off what your system can do.