The Mitchells vs. the Machines
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Is it possible that we’ve already seen the best mainstream entertainment of the year? Yes, it is already May, the year is almost already half over (what? how?), but with the elongated Oscar season only recently ending, putting the first three months into the bucket labelled ‘2020’ and so little mainstream film content being released to the world yet, you might as well wrap it up. OK, we still got a couple Marvel movies, Mission: Impossible, James Bond, Dune, and other things coming up, 2021 will be a fun movie year. The first big strike for the year is Sony Animation’s The Mitchells vs. the Machines, from newcomer filmmaker Michael Rianda and delivered by our entertainment overlords at Netflix.
Briefly, it is the story of teenager Katie Mitchell, a creative young woman who never found her place until being accepted to film school, a corner of society chock full of other young eccentrics. In order to help correct their straining relationship before she leaves for good, Katie’s father cancels her plane ticket to California and arranges a cross-country family road trip as a last grasp at the full family unit. This awkward trip just so happens to coincide with the robot apocalypse and now the Mitchells are humanity’s last hope.
The Mitchells vs. the Machines takes the mantle from Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse and The Lego Movie before that as an animated movie both sharp in its storytelling and inventive in its visual style. It’s not a coincidence that all three of those films were developed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, and their stamp is all over this.
Saying that, I’ll temper the praise a bit - this is neither the completely thorough masterpiece that is Spider-Verse nor the surprise that was The Lego Movie. I’m not sure it completely transcends the sci-fi premise quite as well as Spider-Verse, in particular, became the best version of the comic book to screen adaptation, and it is nowhere as creative. That would be a tough task to top, no one should expect hitting that height. Still, once the robots become sentient and start rounding up the humans across the planet, it is a well done but pretty standard genre entry. The we are over-reliant on the evil tech company storyline isn’t exactly unique, either.
Interestingly, it is the first act that really grabbed me, however, the simpler stuff about family and character building. I was laughing my ass off within the first two minutes, with its offbeat humor and sheer visual creativity on display. Again, it never quite reaches the kaleidoscopic insanity of Spider-Verse, but the way it uses modern cultural touchpoints to inform its look is awesome. The influences reach between internet memes to DIY backyard filmmaking flawlessly. The visual sense matches completely with the mind of its main character, a teen who has lived her entire life bombarded with quickly changing multi-media in an ultra-kinetic but not overwhelming way.
The voice casting is also superb. The Mitchells vs. the Machines would have worked without the talents of Abbi Jacobson, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Eric André, Olivia Colman, Fred Armisen, and Beck Bennett, but they do nothing but add to the experience. Colman as the big bad sentient AI and Armisen and Bennett as two robots with a malfunction are the highlights for me, especially given how the sci-fi elements otherwise weren’t what I connected with here.
And before I leave a special shoutout to Monchi, the Mitchell’s faithful (and unfortunate looking) pug. Even in the joke-a-second style of Lord & Miller, Monchi’s usage rate is high and always welcomed. He is not just a good boy but a good sport for admirably being the butt of the joke often.
To swing back to the question I opened with, the answer will probably end at no, but can you blame me for being provocative? After I previously wrote on Raya and the Last Dragon, a solid-but-only-solid Disney animated film, it is good to see something that goes to the extremes of visual storytelling in animation. Even if the sci-fi genre elements aren’t as inventive as the visual style, there is still enough investment in the characters to make The Mitchells vs. the Machines a little more than just a purely visual masterpiece.