COVID was not very kind to animated films. It nearly killed Pixar studios. After cutting the theatrically released Onward off at the knees two weeks into its run, it had three of its films go straight to streaming; Soul, Luca, and Turning Red. Their first film back in theatres Lightyear did not fair well either and Elemental had to do a lot of work to get into the black.
One animated film that came out during this time came from Sony Animation, the studio behind Hotel Transylvania and the Spider-Verse films. It's called The Mitchells vs. the Machines and it never even got the theatrical release it was intended to get. It was supposed to come out January of 2020. COVID delayed it to later in that year and then delayed it once again. Sony eventually gave up and sold it to Netflix who put it on their service an entire year after it should have been released.
It was popular on that streaming service but the downside to streaming services are twofold. 1) You only have access to that movie if you have that streaming service. If it came out in the theatres, anyone could have access to it. 2) You can never tell what constitutes success for a streaming film unlike you can for a box office film. For example, Netflix reported it was the service's most-viewed animated movie, with 53 million households having watched the film in the first 28 days of availability. But did this allow it to penetrate the popular culture bubble? I didn't see Mitchells vs. the Machines lunch boxes, t-shirts, or stuffed animals like you do many other animated films that are popular. You didn't hear kids talking about it and in fact, I had never even heard about it until it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Film. It lost to Encanto which was released on streaming as well but where I saw lunch boxes, t-shirts, stuffed animals, and everyone was talking about, or in this case, not talking about, Bruno.
The Mitchells vs. the Machines is an fun-filled film and deserves to be seen by many. Like all successful animated movies, it has both gags for the kids to laugh at, and enough subtle adult humor for the parents to be entertained as well. The story involves the Mitchells, a dysfunctional family much unlike many others. I say this because each family member is very unique in their own strange way, not your typical family by any affair. The daughter gets accepted to a film school on the other side of the country and her dad, in an effort to bring them closer together, decides to sell her plane ticket and have them all drive together in the station wagon.
In the middle of their road trip a wunderkind tech titan has decided to take his Siri-like program and replace her with home robots. She of course resents this and decides instead to take over the world. This surprisingly is incredibly easy because people have become so dependent on their technology. The moment she cuts off their wifi, people don't know what to do and give up almost immediately. So it is up to the Mitchells to save the day.
When I began watching this film, I couldn't help but wonder in the back of my mind, this seems like what Mabel from the show Gravity Falls would look like when she grew up and started her own family. This kept gnawing at me as I continued to watch and when it was over, did a little investigation as I often do after seeing a movie. Come to find out the creators of this film had been the show runners for Gravity Falls, a quirky animated show that ran on Disney XD for two seasons, and in my opinion, is one of the best animated shows ever. Even the show's creator, Alex Hirsch, was involved in this film, lending his voice to a couple of characters as well as consulting for it.
Not only that, Phil Lord and Chris Miller had put their hands all over the film as well. If you don't know who this duo is, they wrote and directed both Cloudy With a Chance of Meatball and The Lego Movie films, graduated to more adult fare with the 21 and 22 Jumpstreet , and then went back to write both Spider-Man Spider Verse films. Nearly everything these guys touch seems to turn to gold with no exception here.
In addition to the well written and funny story, the voice actors do a great job as well. Danny McBride, who has a face for animated films, brings his wry delivery of lines to the father of the Mitchell clan. Maya Rudolph, who is so good in so many things and never gets her due, brings life to the mom. Those British have such a way of making evil sound cool and Olivia Coleman provides the voice of our antagonist PAL who is trying to take over the world. Two of the funniest characters are two robots who get damaged and end up helping the Mitchells voiced by Fred Armisen and Beck Bennett, two very underrated funnymen who no matter what supporting role you give them, bring another level to it that others would not.
Ultimately, Mitchells vs the Machines is what you want out of an animated movie. One you can sit down as a family that keeps the kids entertained and doesn't cause the adults to fall asleep. I will take Mitchells one step further in that much like Gravity Falls which I often found myself watching without my kids, I would watch Mitchells on my own. It is just a clever movie, animated or not.
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