Back To School By Thornton Melon

1208 Words3 Pages

The college experience and lessons learned today are not limited to age nor are the movies. In the 1986 live action movie, Back to School, Thornton Melon, played by Rodney Dangerfield, is a successful, self-taught business man going to college. In the 2013 animated film, Monsters University, James P. ‘”Sulley” Sullivan, voiced by John Goodman, is a youthful and immature first year college student. These characters in their relationships with others on the campus, share comparable personality traits, reveal mutual weaknesses, and learn more than academic lessons. Those lessons, however, are taught by different approaches because of their style and age-appropriateness. The comparable protagonists’ personalities and relationships in Back to School …show more content…

In MU, Sulley gets acquainted with Mike Wazowski and they become instant enemies. Mike, from the beginning of his childhood, had been the outcast and frequently got picked on for being vertically challenged or not scary enough. Even through all those harsh words, he wanted to become a scarer. He was willing to learn what it took to be a great scarer. Sulley was not happy that Mike was beating him at his own game and they both got kicked out of the scare program. They then teamed up to regain their status as future scares. during the Scare Games and became good friends and accepted each other’s ways. Even after they became close, Sulley knew they could not win the games because he thought Mike could not be scary enough. Sulley broke the scare machine that rated the scarer and made it easy for Mike to win. Sulley apologized to everyone and told the dean what he had done. Mike eventually forgave Sulley and became the best friends you see in Monsters Inc. by scaring a bunch of police officers. Thornton’s relationship with his son, Jason, in BTS, had a rift in it cause by his retched ex-wife, Vanessa. Finally, Vanessa was kicked to the curb and Thornton decided to visit Jason at his college. Jason was not prepared for his surprise visit from his father and hoped he would not have to tell him that he was the towel boy for the school swim team and frequently got picked on by the jocks and frat boys. Jason thought he was not cut out for college life and wanted to be like his father. Thornton took that as an opportunity to be with his son and help him through college so he enrolled that day. All semester Jason studied hard and Thornton partied hard and paid NASA to write Jason’s astronomy essay, which Jason declined use of, and bought the rest of his own essays. Thornton got caught and denied that he cheated his way through school. Jason helped Thornton cram for his

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