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The Mitchells vs. the Machines Movie Review

The Mitchells vs. the Machines is a 2021 animated science fiction comedy film directed by Mike Rianda and starring Danny McBride and Abbi Jacobson. It’s one of Sony’s better animated efforts.

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“I am Linda Mitchell, mother of two.

Look upon me in fear!“

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A quirky, dysfunctional family’s road trip is upended when they find themselves in the middle of the robot apocalypse and suddenly become humanity’s unlikeliest last hope. This is basically the sci-fi version of ‘The Incredibles’, and there is nothing wrong with that, but it did leave a lot to be desired in terms of originality, but not inventiveness and more on that later.

This movie is very much against technology to the point that it becomes rather biased in its message. There is a lot that is great about technology and that was not seen in this movie unfortunately. Still though, the movie examines the obsession with our screens, especially ones of the mobile variety very effectively. The clash between generations is also well explored in the central relationship.

Yes, Rick and Katie’s fraught relationship is the heart and soul of this entire movie and the best reason to see it. We have seen a similar dynamic before in animated movies, but this one explores so well that generational shift and differences to the point where it would seriously hurt such parent-child relations. The flashbacks to her childhood were very moving and the film is only great when dealing with these two with the other storylines being less efficient.

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Linda is a fun mom, though she got the least to do in this story unfortunately. As for Aaron, I really liked this kid and his obsession with dinosaurs was quite relatable, but the problem here was his voice, which sounded way too adult for me. The director himself voiced the kid and that was a bad choice as he sounds too mature. Others fared much better with Jacobson and McBride being particularly terrific.

Olivia Colman as PAL is great. This virtual assistant was a very cool, capable main villain and I loved her backstory quite a bit. The robots also looked great and were quite formidable opponents while the dog sidekick is wonderful. The best joke in the movie was the scene where the robots could not recognize him as they had troubles differentiating a dog from a pig. That was quite clever.

Speaking of the humor, The Mitchells vs. the Machines is actually much funnier than it had any right to be. The tech jokes were quite strong and the family interactions also led to some funny moments. I found that other “perfect” family very amusing too. Whenever the movie let loose and they had fun, the audiences were bound to be entertained as well.

The main issue I’ve had with it has to be its overly frenetic pacing. The film never quite slows down and that was its major hurdle that it never overcame. It was just too quick and brisk with way too many action scenes that were also overly silly in their execution.

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The animation is excellent. Sony did something different here and they introduced wonderful 2D hand-drawn effects in the vein of comic-book little touches. Those were wonderful and they helped accentuate the humor very successfully. It’s overall a solid movie and the first Sony animation to land on Netflix.