The Mitchells vs The Machines (2021) - Review Thread

I liked it. But any movie with "Mitchell" in the title needs Joe Don Baker.

Really enjoyed this it made me laugh a lot more than I was expecting too. Solid 8.5/10

The Mitchells Vs. The Machines(5/3/2021)
The new Sony produced Netflix distributed animated film The Mitchells Vs. The Machines was written by Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe and directed by the former but is largely being sold on the talents of its producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who have become pretty large voices in cinematic comedy both through live action projects like 21 Jump Street and animated projects like The Lego Movie and perhaps most relevantly here their work bringing Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse to the big screen. Personally I’m a bit agnostic about the two, they make clever and enjoyable films but their self-referential snark does sometimes go too far and undermine the movies they’re making and this latest project has a lot of their usual strengths and weaknesses. The film’s protagonist is a girl named Katie who enjoys making odd Youtube videos and has just been accepted to film school but rather than flying out to California her father surprises her with a plan to make this a family road trip instead in hopes that it will shore up the family’s fractured relationship before she’s gone for good. Katie is an interesting protagonist for an animated family film as she’s older than the film’s ostensible target audience but the film portrays her discontent well and does a pretty good job of illustrating why she would think her parents and particularly her father was rather insufferable. Then the movie takes a left turn when a very PG-rated robot apocalypse breaks out around them and it essentially becomes a zombie movie for kids (but with robots, to keep things less gory) and it becomes a “family unites under pressure” situation.

The animation is a bit reminiscent of “Spiderverse,” I don’t think it’s animated “on twos” like that was but there’s a similar stylization and an even greater willingness to break the fourth wall. The characters are engaging, though certain characters definitely get more screentime than others. The mother in the family gets shortchanged a bit and the brother is kind of a one-joke entity. I think what ultimately kind of brought the movie down for me was the story, specifically the way it kind of makes this family the center of the universe in its third act. There’s a bit of a cheap childhood wish fulfillment to having your family save the world and to do make that happen here the script takes some kind of silly shortcuts and indulges in some goofiness like making robots short-circuit at the sight of a dog. Had they made it a slightly more lowkey tale of a family surviving through some crazy times I think it might have been better off and frankly a bit more relevant to recent events, though I guess it’s not the movie’s fault it didn’t play into that a bit better. But then again maybe that’s just me being a picky grump because I do suspect that this is going to be a very popular movie with audiences and that few people are going to find themselves not at least finding something to enjoy about it. It is perhaps a shame that the aforementioned recent events have basically forced this go straight to Netflix because I think it would have caught on pretty strong in theaters and been quite the event for Sony if they hadn’t sold it off.
***1/2 out of Five