The Mitchells vs. The Machines movie review (2021)

Once called “Connected” (neither title is great), this Sony Pictures Animation project was a casualty of the pandemic, originally scheduled for release last fall before a title change and a shuffle off to the King of the Streamers. Directed by Michael Rianda, and written by Rianda and Jeff Rowe, “The Mitchells vs. The Machines” is produced by Phil Lord & Chris Miller and is unmistakably creatively inspired by their work on “The Lego Movie” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse.” Like the former, it is loaded with jokes and gags with so many visual flights of fancy happening at any given moment that it takes multiple rewatches to catch them all. The creative influence of “Spider-verse” is even more essential to this project’s success—just as that Oscar-winning modern animated classic used comic and street art as a visual inspiration, this project uses viral and YouTube culture not just in its storytelling but in its design. The result is one of the most visually vibrant animated films since, well, “Spider-verse.”

Like a lot of teens, the generation gap between Katie Mitchell (Abbi Jacobson) and her father Rick (Danny McBride) has been widened by technology. She has a creative spirit that has led to directing viral YouTube videos, most of them starring her chunky pug Monchi in a series called “Dog Cop”; dad has no idea how to use a computer or smartphone to even watch the videos that have kind of made his daughter a star. The personality divide between Katie and her dad feels even wider as she’s planning to go off to film school to pursue her dreams, and he’s of a generation that doesn’t really know how to express his feelings other than through gifts like a perfect screwdriver. In an effort to unite them one more time before she leaves, Rick decides that the Mitchells—including mom Linda (Maya Rudolph), Katie’s brother Aaron (Rianda), and Monchi—should drive Katie to school for a last family road trip. It just happens to come on the same day that the machines take over the world.

While the Mitchells are navigating family drama, tech giant Mark Bowman (Eric Andre) introduces the world to the next step in the tech evolution, a new version of PAL, this universe’s version of the iPhone or iPad. Imagine if your iTechnology like Siri or Alexa was included in a literal robot helper. It doesn’t go well because the original PAL virtual assistant (playfully voiced by Olivia Colman) resents being replaced by the new model and so she turns all of the technology on the planet against its human owners, imprisoning them and planning their replacement. Only the Mitchells survive the robot apocalypse, and only the Mitchells can stop PAL from destroying the human race.