THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES (2021)

THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES (2021)

Tagline: From the humans that brought you Spider-Man Into The Spiderverse and The Lego Movie. 

(Animation, Adventure, Comedy) [PG]

It's almost like stealing people's data and giving it to a hyper-intelligent AI as part of an unregulated tech monopoly was a bad thing.

In this one, a girl named Katie is getting ready to head off to college. After inadvertently breaking her computer, her dad Rick decides the trip should be taken by the entire family rather than Katie taking a flight. On the trip, the family who typically doesn’t get along finds a way to bond. Unfortunately, film school will have to wait for Katie, because a jealous older AI has decided to take over the world with the help of every machine that has ever had a “PAL” chip installed. It doesn’t take long before we find out all that stands between the end of humanity and a complete robot apocalypse is this quirky loveable family…the Mitchells… 

First off Sony hits this thing out of the park with animation style. This movie takes some high-quality CGI animation and mixes it with 2D animation that gives this thing a really cool feel throughout. While it does have its slow moments the humor in this movie is ratcheted up to 20 mostly in the first half of the film. The second half is good, but it feels like they could have cut out half an hour and things would have been fine. 

The storyline, unfortunately, feels pretty ripped off from films like THE GOOFY MOVIE and even VACATION, but the addition of an AI enemy is pretty fun. I also loved some of the twists with the AI element I am not going to spoil them here. This also allows this movie to do some really inventive things with the animation and design work. You almost have to watch this more than once to catch all the seemingly hundreds of little ideas crammed into the movie that come from Katie’s head. So what makes this movie work, is the way the story is told, not that it’s been done before minus the robots.

Hidden in all this spectacle and humor sadly are a few very creepy things. One is the film's obvious stab at AI and unregulated tech monopolies. This is a far too real issue and when you start to think about how much power some of these companies have just around our computer searches, what we post on social media etc., it’s sickening. Essentially if you see a “Fact Check” on something in social media, it’s because that thing that is getting “Fact-Checked” is TRUE. Proof enough that big tech even tries to control the truth you get to see if they like or don't like it. THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES is a light-hearted film with a damning anti-big tech message. This is far from the first time Hollywood has warned us about technology and or the people using it though. The entire TERMINATOR series is also one of the major statements on that. 

Kids will have a blast with this movie and as an adult, I could identify with a lot of the deeper themes. I am not sure when this thing will get released on DVD or BLU-RAY but it’s one of the better-animated flicks SONY has done. 

Overall this lands at a 4 out of 7 for me. The originality regarding the storyline was lacking and the balance of genuine humor and seriousness feels off along with the outlandishly ridiculous ending. We do get a bit too much of the internet-gag humor stuff, which feels cheap. However, none of that takes away from how fun this thing is and I wish it had gotten a bigger theatrical run. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF SONY PICTURES ANIMATION AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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