Review: THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES Is an Animated Movie Masterpiece
The Mitchells vs the Machines is a new Netflix Original film produced by Sony Pictures Animation that released over the weekend. The film is directed by Mike Rianda (Gravity Falls), co-directed by Jeff Rowe (Gravity Falls), and written by both of them. The dynamite duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller of Into the Spider-Verse and The LEGO Movie fame produced alongside Kurt Albrecht (Hotel Transylvania). If you haven’t watched the film yet, stop reading this review and go watch it.
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.
The Mitchells vs the Machines is a phenomenal movie with a lot of heart. The animation is absolutely gorgeous, and you can tell the team had a lot of fun. Since we’re often following the perspective of Katie, a newly accepted film school student, we see a lot of fun moments that play on her love of film as well as plenty of homages to classic films new and old.
It’s very easy to immediately think the film is talking about the evils of technology. That’s a very common theme that people like to use because it’s easy. The Mitchells vs the Machines is not about that though. Yes, there’s technology that’s supposed to be evil, but the same technology is used for good. Rather, the main theme of the film is the importance of relationships. Relationships with family, with friends, and even with technology. We also explore maintaining relationships versus forging new ones and the importance of both. All of the relationships that we see in the film feel very real and natural which is just beautiful.
The humor for this movie was absolutely incredible as well. I was laughing almost nonstop through this movie, only stopping to cry at the touching moments. If you ever did a vacation with your family growing up, you’ll probably relate to some degree to everything in this movie. There’s a giant Furby, plenty of memes, all sorts of problems arising on the vacation, and so much more.
I highly recommend watch The Mitchells vs the Machines. It was amazingly written, very well acted, beautifully animated, tender in parts, and laugh out loud hilarious all throughout. This might be my favorite movie the year.
