Movie Mondays: The Mitchells vs the Machines

Sony Pictures Animation is a weird studio. Looking through their catalogue makes you release just what a roller coaster it is, with terrifying lows, dizzying highs and oh so creamy middles. This is the studio that was the butt of everyone’s jokes when they made the Emoji Movie, only to completely turn things around and become a force to be reckoned with thanks to Into the Spider-Verse.

A lot of people like to think that Spider-Verse was what put Sony Animation over the top, and they aren’t wrong, but they also aren’t entirely accurate. They had made some pretty good films before Spider-Verse like the Hotel Transylvania movies, the films they did with Aardman and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. It's just that the Emoji movie was so catastrophically bad it made everyone retroactively forget the good films they did.

The Emoji Movie was not their only bad film they did, remember the live-action Smurfs movies, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Since then, the studio has made attempts to salvage their credibility. Spider-Verse certainly helped, but one film does not recover one's reputation. Which leads us to today's movie, The Mitchells vs the Machines.

Directed and written by Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe, who had previously worked on Gravity Falls, The Mitchells vs the Machines was released on April 30th 2021 exclusively to Netflix. It was originally supposed to come out in cinemas last year under the name Connected but, well you know. Luckily the film has been released on Netflix for everyone to see under its original, and much more interesting, title.

I originally didn’t think much of the film when I saw the initial trailer. It looked alright but nothing special. But then I saw the later trailers and it started to look a lot better. It also helped when I found out the film is being produced by Chris Miller and Peter Lord, the same people behind Into the Spider-Verse and the Lego Movie, the latter of which is one of my favourite animated movies of all time.

I know the two aren’t directing the movie, but they do know quality when they see it. And good directors can make for even better producers, just look at Steven Spielberg. So, is this movie another step in Sony Animations redemption arc, or a backslide into mediocrity? Let's find out.

Before we get into the story, I want to gush about the film's animation. One thing I’ve noticed with some CG animated movies as of late is that some are attempting to be a 3D animated movie that looks like a 2D animated movie. Into the Spider-Verse did this by attempting to emulate the animation style of a 2D movie by cutting the frame rate. Personally, I wasn’t a big fan of that. I know a lot of people like the animation style in Spider-Verse, but I wasn’t too keen on it.

The Mitchells vs the Machines though, this one does it a lot better in my opinion. Rather than try to emulate the animation style of hand drawn animation, it emulates the art style of hand drawn animation. As a result, you have a film with the look of a 2D film but with the smoother animation of a 3D film. The animation reminded me a lot of The Peanuts Movie, in that it’s animated in CG but designed to look hand drawn.

The whole movie has a hand painted look to it with the texture work. The backgrounds in particular are gorgeous, they’re some of the best I’ve seen in 3D animation. Even on the characters there’s some great texture work that makes them almost look hand drawn, hell there were times where it you could mistake it for a 2D film. There were some photos of the characters in the film that were done in 2D and it’s hard to notice at first.

The character designs are great too. They look like they were ripped straight out of a comic strip. They're super stylized and I like how each of the characters is given a distinct body type and look that fits their personality. The first time you see the dad, you know what he’s like just from the way he’s designed.

The best part about the character animations is how expressive they are. That's one thing about Sony Pictures Animation that they do very well. Even their worst films have very expressive animation. Something that stands out in this movie are the eyes. This movie has a very simplistic design for the eyes, they’re just giant white circles with a dot in them. That's as simple as you can get and yet that simplicity allows for way more expressive facial animations.

What I like about this movie is how they were able to get loads of different expressions with just slight alterations, like a line here or a slight change in the eyes. This makes the expressions very cartoony while also having a degree of subtlety to them. They're both subtle and cartoony at the same time, I don’t know how that’s even possible but somehow, they pulled it off.

If you know anything about Sony Animated Pictures movies, you’ll know that a lot of their films tend to be very hyperactive. There's a lot of colour and energy put into the animation of a lot of Sony films. Hyperactive animation can be very fun to watch, but it can also become irritating to look at if done poorly. A good film like this knows when to go all out and when to dial things back, one of the reasons Hotel Transylvania worked as well as it did was how it balanced out it’s energetic moments with its quieter ones.

Mitchells vs the Machines does just that. This is a very lively movie with very fun, fast paced animated sequences that are a blast to watch. But it also scales things back for the more dramatic moments and to focus a bit more on the characters.

Which transitions us into the story. Mitchells vs the Machines follows the titular family on a cross country road trip to drop the daughter, Katie, off at a film school in California. Katie is a bit of a quirky weirdo who likes to make films for fun, with her dream to be able to make movies as a profession.

Her father Rick though, he’s a bit more worried about her. He doesn’t think this is the best decision for her and doesn’t want her to get her to have her dreams crushed. their relationship is strained to say the least, and the road trip is Rick’s attempt to reconnect with his daughter before she moves away.

And right in the middle of the trip, the robot apocalypse starts. A sentient mobile phone AI named Pal finds out it’s about to be replaced, so it decides to get revenge by taking all the humans and blasting them into space. Now it’s up to the Mitchells to put a stop to them as the only family left uncaptured.

The Mitchells are a typical dysfunctional family. You've got Rick the dad who likes nature but hates technology, Katie the quirky teenager who doesn’t fit in anywhere, Aaron the young son who is obsessed with dinosaurs and Linda the mom trying to hold everyone together. They also have this fat little pug who is just the derpiest thing ever and I absolutely love him.

What I like about the Mitchells is how they feel like a genuine family. They go through a lot of the typical things a family would do, they have recognizable flaws like the dad being useless with computers or the mom being jealous of their neighbours. A lot of this is exaggerated for comedic effect, and also because it’s a cartoon, but it does feel strangely authentic. This makes the characters very relatable and endearing. I could some of my own family in these characters. Even the dog reminded me of my own dog.

The movie doesn’t focus on the entire family that much. The main focus is on the relationship between Katie and Rick. Aaron and Linda do have some memorable moments of their own, Linda has an especially great one near the end, but a lot of the more emotional moments centre around the father and daughter. Rick and Katie's relationship is handled in a believable way, they care about each other, but they’ve drifted apart as their interests diverged.

A lot of the movie is about them not trusting one another, Rick not believing that Katie can achieve her dreams and Katie not believing her dad can actually save the world. Neither stance is unreasonable, the film takes time to properly show why each feels the way they do so you understand their thought processes. I will say that Katie was a bit of a jerk to Rick, but she’s a teenager, they all act like jerks to their parents.

The parts that focus on the family are the best ones in the film. There were some very sweet moments between the characters. I didn’t expect the emotional moments to hit as hard as they did, based on the trailers I thought this was going to be a straight up wacky comedy. It was a pleasant surprise. It is still a wacky comedy, but I’m glad the film has a lot of heart to its story.

And the comedy itself is fantastic. This is where the energetic animation really shines. The film has phenomenal comedic timing and there were action sequences in the film that had me on the floor. I laughed out loud several times throughout the film and that’s very rare for me. There’s a scene with a giant Furby that talks like it’s demonically possessed and shoots lasers out of its mouth. If that description didn’t get a chuckle out of you, I don’t know what will.

One thing did worry about me going into this. I was afraid that this would devolve it a screed about how mobile phones and social media are bad. I've seen too many pieces of media espouse that exact same message and I'm tired of it.

Thankfully, the way this movie handles it is very well done. The message isn’t so much that technology is bad, it’s a little bit more nuanced than that. The message is more that over relying on technology is bad and how it can be difficult for the older, less tech savvy people to keep up with the younger generation. It's a far more interesting message, and a far more relevant given how different the generational gaps are becoming.

There were some parts of the commentary that felt very forced. It feels like the movie is trying to say a lot about tech and big tech companies, but the story doesn’t allow them to do that. So there are a couple of lines here that are shoehorned in to try to make a commentary on Silicon Valley tech companies that just feel out of place. I can understand, as a reviewer there are times when I want to make a point and I can’t fit it in. Sometimes though, it’s best just to leave them out.

The film doesn’t really dwell on the Silicon Valley stuff for too long. Its focus is on the family which is where it is at its strongest. Though I am glad its social commentary was handled with some nuance. That's very rare these days.

I really enjoyed The Mitchells vs the Machines. It's got great animation, the story is touching, the characters were likable and was very funny. This is a great animated family film with a very quirky sense of humour. Perhaps a bit too quirky.

There were moments in this film where it was trying way too hard to be weird and eccentric that just comes across as a little obnoxious. Sometimes it works and leads to some good laughs, other times not so much. As the film went a lot of the film's quirkiness began to wear on me. Luckily the films balance of emotional moments kept things from getting too bad.

One of the films quirky elements I found a little annoying were the aftereffects. You know the drawings that you see in and/or on a teenager's notebook, well this movie has a lot of effects that look like that style of drawings throughout the film and I’m not a fan of it. This kind of thing worked in Into the Spider-Verse because that was meant to look like a comic book.

Here though I just don’t see the point. I can understand why they did this since the main character is a teenage girl who would do those kinds of drawings. The problem is a lot of the time they feel unnecessary and distracting. There are times when they work and add to the film's comedy, but 90% of them could be cut and you wouldn’t lose much.

It feels like the movie is trying way too hard. They pull out everything to try to make a little weirder and off beat and it just goes a bit too far. I don’t mind movies with quirky humour, I mean I like the Lego Movie and that was built on it, but here they could have dialed things back just a little bit.

Some of the comedy was also very lame. A lot of the internet references fell flat, felt like a “how do you do fellow kids” moment with some of them. The comedy in this movie shifts between two extremes. When it’s good, it’s some of the best comedy in an animated movie, but when it’s cringe, it’s untouchably cringe.

I also think you probably could have cut about ten minutes out of the movie. The movie is very well paced but there were some parts that felt a little off. There was a moment where I thought the movie was about to wrap up and it went on for another 20 minutes.

I have one last complaint, well more of a nit-pick really, about one of the voices. The voice acting itself is solid across the board, except for Mike Rianda as Aaron. Not because his performance is bad, he does a decent job, I just don’t like older men voicing young boy characters. It just doesn’t sound right; they should have just gotten a kid or a female voice actress who can do a young boy voice.

So, is The Mitchells vs The Machines worth a watch? Absolutely. It's a great animated family film with excellent animation, good comedy and a lot of heart. It may be a bit too off-beat for its own good, but in all the ways that matter it succeeds with flying colours. I don’t know how long this Sony animation redemption arc will last, but if they can keep up the momentum the Emoji Movie disaster will be a distant memory. Now if only we could get that Genndy Tartakovsky Popeye movie.