'Monsters' hazmat scene loses its appeal

By Susan Wloszczyna
USA Today

Those pixies at Pixar, Disney's computer-animation partner on such monster movie hits as "Toy Story" and its sequel, love to plop pop references, cinematic homages and in-jokes into the crannies of their cartoons.

"Monsters, Inc." is no different. The comedy that lets those bogeymen who lurk in children's bedrooms out of the closet is packed with cleverly hidden chuckles.

They range from the soap dispensers in scare-factory bathrooms that carry the warning "Do Not Eat" to the sushi restaurant Harryhausen's that refers to revered movie-monster animator Ray

Harryhausen ("Mighty Joe Young," "Jason and the Argonauts") to the yellow ball decorated with a star that has bounced its way into every Pixar project.

Says "Monsters" director Pete Docter: "These films take four or five years to make. We have to amuse ourselves somehow."

However, there is one reference that wasn't meant to be quite so timely: the yellow-suited hazmat team from the Child Detection Agency that decontaminates the monsters whenever they accidentally touch a tyke — considered toxic matter — while on a scare mission. In one scene that echoes the 1983 eco-thriller "Silkwood" with Meryl Streep as a nuclear

reactor worker, a furry fiend is shaved and sprayed after a tot's tiny sock somehow sticks to his back.

Of course, when "Monsters, Inc.," was first conceived, no one could have predicted current events.

"If we were creating it today, it's certainly not the tack we would have taken," Docter says. Since real-life biohazards took over the headlines only a few weeks ago, "we really couldn't change it."

Media psychologist Stuart Fischoff says that the hazmat situation depicted in the movie likely will stir the most concern in grown-ups.

Ultimately, he says, kids will take cues from their parents. If Mom and Dad aren't upset, Junior should be fine.