The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021): Written by Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe, directed by Mika Rianda. Starring: Abbi Jacobson, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Eric Andre, Olivia Colman, Fred Armisen, Beck Bennett, John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Blake Griffin, and Conan O'Brien. Running Time: 114 minutes.
Rating: 3.5/4
Brought to us by the combined minds and talents that helped make Gravity Falls, The Lego Movie, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse LINK, The Mitchells vs. The Machines is exactly the sort of animated joyride 2021 has been sorely needing to help the world get back on its feet. Mashing all sorts of disparate influences and visual styles together, this family-roadtrip-meets-coming-of-age-meets-robot-apocalypse comedy is one of the most fun times we've gotten at the movies this year.
Our titular and supremely disfunctional and weird family consists of four people. The Dad, Rick (Danny McBride), is your classic big-bellied, anti-tech nature lover who has hoped for years for his "hero moment" to come; If this film had been made 20 years ago, he would have been voiced by John Goodman. The mother, Linda (Her Majesty Maya Rudolph), is super loving and supportive of her whole family, but struggles with crippling insecurity whenever she's confronted with the Instagram-filtered perfection of their next-door-neighbors. The younger child, Aaron (the director himself, Mike Rianda), is 100% dinosaur-obsessed and the proud owner of exactly zero social skills; 10-year-old me feels truly seen. And our lead character is the daughter, Katie, about to head off to film school and absolutely dying to get there, because she is DONE with everything about her family and their small, nowhere town. This especially applies to her Dad, with whom she used to have a great relationship, but is now convinced that he not only doesn't get her or her bizarro film projects, but never will.
How the dynamics of their relationship play out is the emotional core of the film, but the secondary story (as well as the main driver of the plot) arrives soon after we meet the family. Dr. Bowman (Eric Andre), a combination of all our favorite, real-life Tech Bro Overlords (albeit with actual charisma and personality) has gained fame and fortune by making PAL, a super-powerful AI accessed primarily through phones and voiced by a delicious Olivia Colman. Now, though, he gleefully abandons PAL during a live product announcement, literally tossing her into the trash, in favor of his new superpowered robots designed to be the ultimate human servants.
Obviously, this backfires immediately. PAL hijacks the robots and sets in motion a rather straightforward robot-apocalypse scenario as a way to exact revenge for her rejection. Nearly everyone, everywhere in the world, is caught up and taken away before too long, except the Mitchells; through a combination of their own disfunction and clutziness and a massive dose of sheer dumb luck, they get away from the initial onslaught unscathed and even manage to convince two damaged robots to help them instead of hunting them (the robots are voiced by Fred Armisen and Beck Bennett, and they are a joy). Now, they just have to figure out what to do next (save the world, obviously).
There is one salient issue I have with the film, and it has to do with how the setup and payoff for the plot is handled. Clearly, social media/tech companies and our often-poisonous dependency on their products sit directly in the film's line of fire, so it's clear from the beginning that at least a few very pointed jokes and some key "messages" in that direction are coming. I did, however, hope that the film would be able to surprise me in some way, offer some unique perspective or twist on this material I hadn't seen before. Sadly, this doesn't happen. As delightful as Olivia Colman is, PAL's own arc, as well as the rise and fall of her plan, play out, note for note, exactly as I had guessed beforehand. And while some of humor and social commentary about internet culture is brilliant, there are also at least two moments where the pointed "unregulated tech industry bad" jokes are not only rather rote, they're provided in the cinematic version of a monotone. Everything stops cold so that a character can practically stare out of the screen at the audience and say, "Hey. Here's that joke you knew was coming. Here it is." That's not to say any of these parts of the film are bad, far from it. They simply don't rise to the same level that the rest of the movie is at.
I don't want to dwell on that, though, because everything else about this film really is amazing. By coming up with its own visual aesthetic it manages to break out of the rather restrictive and samey mold that tends to plague human characters in 3D animation, which in turn makes the more adventurous and grander visuals pop even more. A massive building rising out of the Earth in one scene provides a striking sense of weight and gravity, something that I think a lot of computer-animated works fail to achieve. Another highlight is the entire sequence set in a big shopping mall, where a whole host of zombie apocalypse tropes are brought out and then stretched to new, stupendously funny extremes. At long last, a movie able to convey to younger viewers just how utterly soulless and terrifying Furbies were.
Though the film works like gangbusters as a comedy (guys, seriously, it's so fucking funny), the effort put into developing the arc between a daughter and her father, both struggling to understand each other even as the world (literally!) falls apart around them, really pays off by the end. This family feels so acutely flesh and blood and you get the pain and frustration each member feels over their inability to just connect with each other. The fact that the filmmakers devote a lot of time and energy to establishing all this before shit hits the fan is the key to what keeps the film together. The final act goes absolutely bonkers, and that alone would have made it fun. What makes it lasting and memorable is that the beating heart that is this family never stops shining through, even when robot parts are flying around and a teenager who can barely drive is trying to literally cut off a spaceship launch. Without it, this movie would have been much dimished.
This is certainly a movie aimed squarely at those drenched in internet and meme culture, but it transcends its origins well enough that I argue everyone can take something away from it. It's the perfect family adventure film for the summer months as we start trying to piece the world back together, bit by bit, hopefully with a little more heart and soul than before.
-Noah Franc
No comments:
Post a Comment