“The Mitchells Vs. The Machines” Film Review

By Quinn Marcus

That “loaf of bread” joke may just go down as the most iconic piece of dialogue in animated history, it got me every time. The Mitchells Vs. The Machines comes to us from directors Michael Rianda, and Jeff Rowe, both of which are relatively new filmmakers who haven’t done much in the past. It tells the story of, you guessed it, the Mitchell family, a dysfunctional, device-addicted band of misfits who may just be humanity’s last hope after an army of robots goes rogue during a ceremony at a tech company known as Pal Labs, and attempts to capture every human under the rule of a phone. Before Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Sony Animation wasn’t all too…well, impressive. Sure, they’d produced a few average animated flicks such as The Pirates, Surf’s Up, and the dreaded Smurfs movies, but hadn’t given me a reason to love their developing studio yet. However, in 2018, I got just that, and in 2021, have they repeated the high bar they set for themselves with a multiverse of Spidermen and women? Yes!..and no.

You see, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse set a new precedent for animated films from all studios, it was truly…revolutionary. From its state-of-the-art animation to a superb voice cast, the world of animation just got a whole lot more interesting. With the announcement of their latest animated project (originally titled Connected), of course, I got excited, the same fantastic team of animators for Into the Spider-Verse coming back for a futuristic, family road-trip commentary on devices, what more could humanity need? Did The Mitchells Vs. The Machines live up to the hype? Well, it’s complicated. Now, before you automatically assume I hated the film, I’m just going to get it out of the way and tell you that I simply…enjoyed it. No, it’s not another Spider-Verse, and it’s certainly not the most intelligent animated film, but it’s a ton of hysterical, ambitious fun.

Let’s start with the things I absolutely loved. First off, the animation is absolutely gorgeous, Sony has once again hit it out of the ballpark with a sleek, entertaining, and very inventive animated style that I’m sure will please children and adults of all ages. If you’ve seen Spider-Verse, the animation in this (although not as amazing) will blow your mind almost as much. The first half of the movie I’d go as far as to call “great,” it was so emotionally engaging, and I immediately fell in love with each of these characters, not only that, but it was legitimately funny, I haven’t laughed this much during an animated film in a while, and that part of the film shocked me. In fact, I’d say 90% of the jokes landed, there was rarely a moment of unintentionally awkward dialogue, most of it really worked for me. The voice cast features the talents of Danni McBride (The Disaster Artist), Maya Rudolph (Bridesmaids), and even Olivia Colman (The Favorite) Now, if you have no idea who I’m talking about, I’m just gonna say that this is what I’d call a pretty stacked cast, every single performance was perfect, I have no faults whatsoever with the voice work.

Okay, now that we’ve finished praising the film’s undeniable qualities, what are some things that I didn’t like? The message was…serviceable at best, if you wanna compare the message in this to something like a Pixar movie, or even Into the Spider-Verse, it’s not a competition. Sure, it has some decent things to say about the seduction of the technological world, and how it’s affecting us today, but unless you’re like seven years old, the message won’t feel all too surprising. The second half of the film got pretty generic for me in terms of plot, the characters were all still entertaining, and as I mentioned before, the jokes were terrific, but there wasn’t much substance left. I felt as if the writers had resorted to the big, bombastic battle trope, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I just didn’t care enough anymore to stay invested.

Everything went out in this huge explosion, to the point of feeling like an illogical cartoon that got too crazy for me to keep up with. Luckily, all is saved with emotionally stimulating moments when the film takes a second to pause, and while sort of out of place, helped me comprehend what was happening. Overall, while at times the film’s plot can be a tad similar to things we’ve seen before (robots taking over the world again because they’ve been given cue dramatic music “NEW ORDERS”), it’s too much of a family-friendly blast to criticize much further than that. I can call out certain parts of the film as much as I want, but I can’t deny how heartwarming, exhilarating, and occasionally genius The Mitchells Vs. The Machines really is.