Review: The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)

The Mitchells vs. the Machines

Rating

Director

Mike Rianda, Jeff Rowe (co-director)

Screenplay

Mike Rianda, Jeff Rowe, Alex Hirsch

Length

1h 53m

Starring

Abbi Jacobson, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Mike Rianda, Eric Andre, Olivia Colman, Fred Armisen, Beck Bennett, Chrissy Teigen, John Legend, Charlyne Yi, Blake Griffin, Conan O’Brien, Doug the Pug

MPAA Rating

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Review

Over the years, Sony Pictures Animation has produced a wide array of animated films, including the popular Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Surf’s Up, Hotel Transylvania, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Yet, it wasn’t until Spider-Man that the studio had displayed the level of creative energy and emotional heft rival studios have displayed. Spider-Man changed that and it seems like they’ve taken that film’s success to heart and produced The Mitchells vs. the Machines, which is easily a step above most of its prior content, but may not quite be up to the level they could possibly be.

When it was announced under the title Connected, the original promotional materials didn’t do the film justice. It looked like another generic family-based animated feature with a servile plot and lackluster character development. Somewhere between that expected 2020 release and its actual 2021 release, the title changed and while I admit that I prefer the original title, the new one better connects the audience to the premise of the film.

In it, the Mitchells are a traditional American family. Daughter Katie (Abbi Jacobson) is a technophile who loves making short movies and wants to go to film school. Dad Rick (voiced by Danny McBride) is a survivalist who doesn’t like or trust technology. Mom Linda (Maya Rudolph) acts as a buffer between the two, once thick as thieves, but now grating against each other over a seemingly disconnected approach to life. Son Aaron (Mike Rianda) loves dinosaurs and looks up to his sister who is the only person who understands him and vice versa.

Katie and her father are growing more distant as they grow older, Katie resenting him for not taking her passions seriously while he is upset that his little girl has grown up and abandoned all that once made them seemingly inseparable. When he abruptly cancels her plane ticket to California and forces the family on a cross-country road trip, things get out of hand long before the tech uprising, led by smart device operating system PAL (Olivia Colman), pushes the family off their track and into roles as saviors of humanity.

The film goes to great lengths to set up this technological plotline, though it’s dropped haphazardly into the first act of the film, giving the audience little time to anticipate what is happening. That level of surprise makes for a jarring moment, which would almost seem fitting thematically if it didn’t feel like that particular connection is unintended. Rianda, who co-directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Jeff Rowe, gives the audience a lot of the kind of sermonizing audiences have come to expect from such a film, but manages to infuse the production with just enough creativity and inventiveness to make up for it.

The concept of the generational divide seems to override the philosophical notions of the science-fiction that drives the film. While Katie seems to fit perfectly within the Gen Z cohort as described, Rick should be either a Gen-Xer or a Millennial, given his obvious age. Yet, his irritation with technology and lack of adaptive capabilities fit more within the Baby Boomer generation since Gen X grew up with the advancement of technology and are often more tech savvy than the prior generation and are certainly not as tech averse as depicted herein. Linda fits better with those generational descriptions than Rick does. While that will be lost on the youngest of viewers, older generations might feel a touch insulted by its overly specific generational stereotypes.

It’s the other theme of the pervasiveness and potential neglect of technologically advanced companies that rings truer and more compelling than the familial dysfunction at the core of the film. While the high tech company that creates the smartphone operating system PAL and its successor, the robots that ultimately stage the uprising, looks and feels more like an Apple analog than a Facebook one, it’s the invasiveness of Facebook that is better reflected by the situations that face our protagonists. Still, the idea of a robot uprising is a framing device rather than a story theme and thus leads The Mitchells vs. the Machines to feel incomplete even when hilarious.

As the film progresses, that predictability slowly fades and the viewer can settle into the hilarity that ensues as this ungainly, prototypical American family turns their dysfunction into success. A lot of the heavy-handedness is easily forgiven when you’re treated to a film with such passion and verve. Then again, the animation style won’t suit everyone, focusing on hyper-stylized characters that sometimes feel unfinished. The style might not work for some, but it should work for many

Being at your best is sometimes not good enough, but The Mitchells vs. the Machines is representative of the post-Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse output of Sony Pictures Animation. This points towards a future that looks a lot brighter than it had been before Spider-Man‘s release. Audiences can just hope that they find ways to explore what’s genuinely fascinating in their films rather than glossing over the finest notions in service to more universal ones even if the end result is still obliquely humorous in places.