But neither the co-directors (Pete Docter, Lee Unkrich, and David Silverman), nor the screenwriters (Andrew Stanton and Daniel Gerson) are tough-minded enough to explore that idea. They want Boo to be a cute, huggable little booger, when they could get much bigger laughs by making her a hellion.

The chase plot, with Sulley and Mike trying to return Boo to her own safe little bed and hide her from the authorities while Randall hunts for her, wears down pretty quickly. Luckily, it's an excuse for some good gags (though not enough) and character work. There's a nifty inside gag tribute to the stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen. There's a funny globehopping sequence with Sulley and Mike zipping through an assortment of international closets, and a chase scene near the end with Sulley, Mike, and Boo zipping through a veritable rollercoaster of bedroom doors that's an attempt to mimic the chase scenes that you find in the best of Aardman Animations' work. It doesn't come close, but on its own terms it's pretty neat. (There's also a direct lift from Chuck Jones's great cartoon "Feed the Kitty" that only brings back memories of how funny the original was.)

The performers bring some distinction to their cuted-up characters. Listening to John Goodman's voice emanating from the furry good guy Sulley makes it seem like the essence of Goodman's big, likable lug persona. He may be more enjoyable here than in many of his recent live-action appearances. Billy Crystal is a bit too on, but Jennifer Tilly's breathy scratch of a voice finds a great match in Mike's girlfriend, Celia. She's a one-eyed looker with hair made up, Medusa-style, of snakes (they rattle when she gets mad). Funniest of all is Bob Peterson as Roz, the office shrew, a behemoth slug with a steel gray mohawk, harlequin glasses, and a cupid-bow patch of lipstick where her lips would be, if she had lips.

As always in a Pixar feature, there are some amazing effects -- especially the sight of Sulley's fur, dotted with snow flakes, blowing in a Himalayan blizzard. But computer animation continues to leave me cold. It's "real" all right, but why should animation attempt to seem more "real"?

"Monsters, Inc." is an agreeable good time. But good within the Disney sensibility means it's about a third as good and funny and crazy as the work animators from Tex Avery and Chuck Jones right on down to Nick Park have given us. We don't, for instance, get to see what could be the funniest sight of all: the monsters at work, scaring little kids.

Maybe the filmmakers thought kids wouldn't warm up to the characters if they showed them jumping out of kid's closets. (Though, in the context of a comedy, that might free kids up to laugh at their bedtime phobias.) At one point, Sulley's boss Mr. Waternoose (James Coburn) complains that kids today are harder to scare; that's a weird complaint in a movie so devoid of the pop culture energy that kids today feed on. (There isn't a video game, a rock poster, a stereo or CD in sight in any of the kids' bedrooms we see.)

These aren't jaded kids -- they're inhabitants of the Disney neverland. Doesn't anybody there know that, today, entertainment for kids means "The Matrix" or "X-Men" or MTV, or even the dark moments of the Harry Potter books? And, as always, there's the requisite amount of Disney sap: a little lesson that the laughter of children can be more powerful than their fears. Ugh. "Monsters, Inc." needs a shot of the storybook scariness that gave "The Nightmare Before Christmas" its kick. It's a nice movie. But Disney has never learned that "nice," especially in comedy, is a negative virtue.

Recent Stories