My Rating: 5/5

Official Info.
Release Date: April 30, 2021
Box Office: n/a (streaming)
Rating: 97% (RT) 7.6/10 (IMDb)
Intended Audience: Family, rated PG
Cast: Michael Rianda (Aaron, voice) Abbi Jacobson (Katie, voice) Danny McBride (Rick, voice) Maya Rudolph (Linda, Voice)

The Mitchells vs. The Machines is a surprisingly deep family film that will entertain audiences of all ages while exposing some of the flaws in our society, particularly the dangers of technology and our over-reliance on it. It follows a dysfunctional family through an apocalypse as they find they are the last humans who haven’t been captured by robots.

What immediately stands out about the film is its animation style. It features an almost watercolor-like aesthetic and looks similar to Sony’s Spiderverse movies.

WARNING: SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT

The Mitchells vs. The Machines jumps right into the action with a flash-forward. We get a glimpse of the chaotic moment a family takes out a group of robots with their old station wagon before the film cuts back to a few days prior.

We get to see into the lives of the Mitchell family, back at home in Michigan. Katie is a tech-savvy amateur filmmaker, while her father, Rick, is the complete opposite, technophobic and frustrated with his family’s use of electronics.

Tension grows between Katie and her father, ultimately leading to her decision to leave for college. The only problem is that Rick cancels her plane ticket instead of a road trip. Even worse, it’s the same day the robots take over the world.

The Mitchells vs. The Machines asks: What if - by some stroke of luck - a completely dysfunctional family ends up as the last people on earth? Could they save the world? Most movies put the best-prepared heroes up against the villain, but The Mitchells vs. The Machines isn’t most movies.
It’s a brilliant but also action-packed and fast-paced film, which is hard to pull off. We witness tech millionaire Mark Bowman introduce the world to a new generation of his virtual assistant PAL, declaring the old version of PAL obsolete, much to the assistant’s dismay.

The film is set in a more advanced version of the present. Today, we have assistants like Bard and ChatGPT that arose since the movie’s release date. The idea of an ultra-powerful virtual assistant seems even more plausible now than when this movie came out in 2021. While virtual assistants are highly impressive, The Mitchells vs. The Machines raises valid concerns.