Mike and Sulley are visiting Monsters University for the weekend to see how their Oozma Kappa fraternity brothers are doing. The group is throwing its first party, but no one has shown up. Fortunately, Mike and Sulley have a plan to liven up the house, to which using a borrowed door station, they sneak into a party at the Roar Omega Roar fraternity and steal all of its food and guests to fill the Oozma Kappa house. The supply runs take them through the closet doors of a married couple's bedroom, repeatedly disturbing their sleep. Once they have the party fully stocked, Scott "Squishy" Squibbles' mother Sherri walks in on it while doing a load of laundry. She is angry with the fraternity, but only because they did not invite her. After lighting a bonfire on the lawn, Sherri introduces the crowd to "door jumping"/"door jamming", involving jumping from the roof with the help of two doors to land safely on the lawn. The guests congratulate the Oozma Kappas for throwing a great party, and many of them decide to pledge the fraternity. In a post-credits scene, the husband and wife wake their son Timmy up and ask if they can sleep with him, saying that there are monsters in their closet. Timmy vehemently replies, "That's what I've been trying to tell you!".
According to the short's writer/director Kelsey Mann, "When you first meet the Oozma Kappas, they go to their fraternity house and the first thing they say is, 'Welcome to Party Central! We haven’t thrown a party yet, but when we do we’ll be ready,'... I kept telling Dan Scanlon|Dan , 'I really want to see their party. We have to do it in the credits or something.' Then when the idea of doing a short came up, we were like, 'That could be the party!'" The short took around eight months to make, to which the voices were recorded near end of production of Monsters University. Mann stated "We would do a couple of pickup lines with Billy Crystal and the other actors for the movie and then we’d get the stuff we needed for the short." Party Central was initially considered as a bonus feature for the Monsters UniversityDVD, but the decision was later made to release the short theatrically. It was originally scheduled to accompany the theatrical release of Pixar'sThe Good Dinosaur until the film was shifted from 2014 to 2015.
Release
Party Central premiered on August 9, 2013 at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, California and accompanied the theatrical release of Muppets Most Wanted on March 21, 2014. Unlike the two feature-length Monsters, Inc. films, Party Central received a PG rating from the MPAA for "some reckless behavior." As a result, it is currently the first Pixar short to receive a PG rating from the MPAA to date and also the second Disney animated short film to have been designated that rating, after 1990's Roller Coaster Rabbit. The short was released for streaming on March 22, 2012, on the Disney Movies Anywhere application for iPhone and iPad, and on the Disney Movies Anywhere website.
After being screened at the D23 Expo, BigScreen Animation noted "judging from Twitter, the response was tremendous." Newsday said "It starts with a simple plot idea and escalates in classic comedy form." Rotoscopers wrote "This short film was a cool, funny idea. Not a story. It was literally a sequence of jokes with no emotional core whatsoever."
