Well, I wanted to watch Raya and the Last Dragon today, but silly me didn’t realise that Disney+ had the ‘Premier Access’ paywall up, and fuck that if I’m going to pay an extra $34 for streaming – so The Mitchells vs. the Machines it is! I’m cautious when it comes to animation right now, because there’s so much of it produced for streaming and I can only view so much. Yeah, I usually stick to the big four closely (Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks, Warner Bros.); those that have a proven track record. The Mitchells vs. the Machines is a Sony production, and from Arthur Christmas to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, I’ve seen some from their catalogue and they’re pretty good. This voice cast seems extensive too – Abi Jacobson, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Eric Andre, Conan O’Brien and Olivia Coleman, to name a few; a bit of a who’s who with comedic repute. So let’s dive into this movie I only found out existed.
Katie Mitchell (Abi Jacobson) is overjoyed to be moving off to college, where she can feel accepted among people who understand her passion for film. It’s been a while since she was once close with her father, as whilst growing up, their interests have drifted apart. Sensing a need to make amends, Rick Mitchell (Danny McBride) improvises a family road trip to drop Katie off at college (when she was very happy to be taking a plane). This coincides with a tech-company launching their newest superintelligence, that leads to robots taking over the world. Believing themselves to be the only humans left unenslaved, the Mitchell family will have to work together to provide the digital kill-code to the tech headquarters before all of humanity is launched into space. As I guess you can already tell, a premise like this isn’t taking itself too seriously for a children’s animation, and lends itself to heaps of colourful action. Michael Rianda makes his directorial debut, as well as voicing the son of the family, Aaron; Maya Rudolph is the voice of the family’s mother, Linda.
I’m not going to complain too long about how ridiculous this is – a shaded mobile phone for a villain, a pig-dog that can short-circuit technology, an attack by toasters – because I think you just have to go with it. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs wasn’t pulling any punches to appear saner, and The Mitchells vs. the Machines isn’t either. I must admit, I got a few decent laughs, but there’s a fair share of jokes that fall flat and cringe too. The dysfunctional family schtick, and commentary on societies attachments to technology never surpasses cliché for mine, and it’s not charming enough when it’s all been done so many times before. Balancing the humour in an apocalyptic adventure is a tough act, but too often the movie wants to come back to the family dynamic for hilarious consequences in the face of real danger – and I have a rule; if they don’t care, I don’t care. How can I invest myself in the stakes of a hostile robot takeover if the Mitchells think it’s a good time for a driving lesson, as they drive through a cybernetic swarm? If I’m to be harsh, I kind’ve I feel sorry for Danny McBride, who isn’t assigned a more charismatic character; I barely empathised with Rick at all. He’s a dodo, and a poor-man’s Mr. Incredible if I ever saw one. My favourite character was probably Aaron, and I wish we saw more of him; that joke, where he was calling people from the phonebook to talk about dinosaurs, was the best!
The animation detail looks ‘flatter’ than most 3D styles, and if my eye is correct, then it’s a way for Sony to stand out I think – this is the studio that produced Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse don’t forget, which is currently unique unto itself. There’s a lot of additional 2D antics too, similar to what… Regular Show would have? Adventure Time? One of those popular cartoons I’m a little too old to investigate. I think I saw a hotdog playing a trumpet, and I definitely saw a piece of pizza eating itself, but mostly the 2D is extroverting the character’s love-levels through little tiny hearts. There’s also a layer of live-action shots that come in randomly, especially at the beginning. With so many formats blending together the creative freedom is truly limitless.
But for a movie about futuristic robots, the most alarming revelation is how easily the movie thinks it can download each character’s consciousness into others minds by some completely convenient montages – who created this ‘greatest hits’ of tiny family moments for Rick to carry around on his Sony camcorder? And how lucky that Katie decided to take a look at it when she did. And I can believe the coincidence that Pal creator Mark (Eric Andre), is watching Katie’s videos at just the moment Rick drops in his pod, but it’s a bit of a stretch that it’s at an exact moment of Katie’s many whacky videos that reflects her inner thoughts on her relationship with her father; c’mon. It’s not even the newest video that Rick refused to watch in the beginning, I don’t think. And what if instead of the video being so obvious, Mark gave an insightful perspective into why the wackier stuff we’ve seen that Rick has seen is loved by other people? It’s clear the movie wants to aim at Pixar-tier emotional impact, but surely it has to work harder to achieve such earned resonance, right? For me, it’s hard to watch at the moments when it wants to be the most captivating.
I can’t believe this movie has such a high rating on Rotten Tomatoes; my only rationale would be that there might be a shortage of family-focused action adventures out there and this not-very-good movie has struck a chord with people. I just have to accept that if The Mitchells vs. the Machines is riding the ocean’s wave of success, then I’m sitting on my towel on the sand. I’m just so glad the movie introduces secondary black mega-deadly robots so that they could be destroyed by potent angry Mum power 🙄 Here’s something I do like; I like how casually our movie’s hero turned out to be a lesbian without it being a big deal – a genuine nod of respect for the progressive maturity in which that is handled. The Mitchells vs. the Machines does actually result in a sweet final few minutes of family appreciation, and the theme of celebrating weird people actually comes together best in the closing credits, but I can’t forgive the rocky road that gets us there. 2.5 or 2.0? Hmmm.
2.5
Leave a Reply