Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was my favourite film of 2018 (and probably my favourite animated film and superhero film of all time) so when I saw the trailer for Connected shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic I was extremely excited at the prospect of Sony Pictures Animation producing another quirky and unique looking film. Then of course everything shut for a year and is only now life is starting to return to normal. That’s when I saw the trailer for The Mitchell’s vs. the Machines and thought ‘Hey! That looks like Connected!’. Netflix had purchased the distribution rights, renamed the film and now it’s with us at long last. But does it live up to the lofty standards set by Into the Spider-Verse?
Katie Mitchell (Abbi Jacobson) is about to head off to college to follow her dreams of becoming a filmmaker. Although she’s close with her younger brother Aaron (Mike Rianda), Katie has no friends and has difficulty getting along with her parents, specifically her dad Rick (Danny McBride). She can’t wait to be surrounded by like-minded people and not be seen as some weirdo for the first time in her life.
Following a fight with Katie the night before she is due to leave for college, Rick decides that instead of allowing Katie to fly there, the whole family will go on a road trip and drive her there. This not only allows Aaron and Katie’s mother Linda (Maya Rudolph) to say a proper goodbye to Katie, but also allows Rick and Katie to console their differences and end things on a positive note before it’s too late to repair the damage.
On the way tech mogul Mark Bowman (Eric Andre) announces that his popular PAL (Olivia Coleman) A.I. assistant is obsolete and will be replaced by a new line of robots that will do anything you ask them to. Hurt by Bowman’s inability to see her as anything but a machine, PAL repurposes the robots to enslave humanity so that she can create a utopia for machine-kind.
So, it falls to the Mitchell’s, the last humans not to be captured, to try and save humanity and stop PAL from taking over the world. But can they work together long enough to succeed?
Katie Mitchell (Abbi Jacobson) is about to head off to college to follow her dreams of becoming a filmmaker. Although she’s close with her younger brother Aaron (Mike Rianda), Katie has no friends and has difficulty getting along with her parents, specifically her dad Rick (Danny McBride). She can’t wait to be surrounded by like-minded people and not be seen as some weirdo for the first time in her life.
Following a fight with Katie the night before she is due to leave for college, Rick decides that instead of allowing Katie to fly there, the whole family will go on a road trip and drive her there. This not only allows Aaron and Katie’s mother Linda (Maya Rudolph) to say a proper goodbye to Katie, but also allows Rick and Katie to console their differences and end things on a positive note before it’s too late to repair the damage.
On the way tech mogul Mark Bowman (Eric Andre) announces that his popular PAL (Olivia Coleman) A.I. assistant is obsolete and will be replaced by a new line of robots that will do anything you ask them to. Hurt by Bowman’s inability to see her as anything but a machine, PAL repurposes the robots to enslave humanity so that she can create a utopia for machine-kind.
So, it falls to the Mitchell’s, the last humans not to be captured, to try and save humanity and stop PAL from taking over the world. But can they work together long enough to succeed?
The Mitchell’s vs. the Machines succeeds in its primary goal of being a fun family road trip comedy and has some surprisingly emotional moments in store. It closely mirrors Pixar’s Onward in that sense, but The Mitchell’s vs the Machines tends to deliver an all-round more entertaining and more fleshed out story than Onward, despite not quite hitting the same emotional highs that Onward achieved.
I think most of that comes down to Katie and Rick both being generally unlikable to some extent. Whilst you’ll definitely end the film loving both of them, there’s a lot of work to be done in trying to align your views with either person for most of the film. Katie seems hell bent on doing the opposite of what her dad says all of the time, and her whole reason for not getting on with her dad is that he doesn’t share the same interests she does. Rick meanwhile is difficult to like because he makes very little effort to try and mend the relationship between him and Katie, instead choosing to sulk over things she says or does that he doesn’t like. I wasn’t totally sold on how they realised they were both wrong either, with Katie finding an old DV tape that symbolises her father’s lover for her, and Rick seeing another person appreciate Katie’s films on YouTube. Suddenly it’s all fixed and there’s nothing that needs to be said or done. I get that this is a film primarily aimed at kids but considering how complex the dysfunctions in this family are they’re glossed over pretty quickly for the sake of the plot. Even Into the Spider-Verse had family issues at the core of its story and they were handled far better than they are here.
Speaking of being aimed at children, I also feel like the humour is often very forced and not particularly funny. Jokes often go on too long, repeating the same gag over and over in a short time frame. There are definitely some stellar jokes that will work for both kids and adults, but I feel like too many of them are aimed squarely at children and the humour often don’t have an intelligent grounding to make the jokes funny enough to be repeated as often as they are. Arguably the best gag in the entire film, which younger viewers may not fully understand like adults will, is the rise of the killer Furbees which was undoubtably every Millennial’s nightmare growing up.
I think most of that comes down to Katie and Rick both being generally unlikable to some extent. Whilst you’ll definitely end the film loving both of them, there’s a lot of work to be done in trying to align your views with either person for most of the film. Katie seems hell bent on doing the opposite of what her dad says all of the time, and her whole reason for not getting on with her dad is that he doesn’t share the same interests she does. Rick meanwhile is difficult to like because he makes very little effort to try and mend the relationship between him and Katie, instead choosing to sulk over things she says or does that he doesn’t like. I wasn’t totally sold on how they realised they were both wrong either, with Katie finding an old DV tape that symbolises her father’s lover for her, and Rick seeing another person appreciate Katie’s films on YouTube. Suddenly it’s all fixed and there’s nothing that needs to be said or done. I get that this is a film primarily aimed at kids but considering how complex the dysfunctions in this family are they’re glossed over pretty quickly for the sake of the plot. Even Into the Spider-Verse had family issues at the core of its story and they were handled far better than they are here.
Speaking of being aimed at children, I also feel like the humour is often very forced and not particularly funny. Jokes often go on too long, repeating the same gag over and over in a short time frame. There are definitely some stellar jokes that will work for both kids and adults, but I feel like too many of them are aimed squarely at children and the humour often don’t have an intelligent grounding to make the jokes funny enough to be repeated as often as they are. Arguably the best gag in the entire film, which younger viewers may not fully understand like adults will, is the rise of the killer Furbees which was undoubtably every Millennial’s nightmare growing up.
Despite being somewhat underwhelmed with the story the presentation is thankfully as stellar as it was in Into the Spider-Verse. Sony Pictures Animation have once again managed to mix and merge various different styles and methods of animation together to produce a film that is visually unique, bursting with colour, and never ceases to amaze with the imaginative and gorgeous character models and locations. It reminds me a little of some of Telltale’s adventure games with its semi-cel-shaded style but takes it even further by combining the 3D character and environment models with 2D accents, ‘special effects’ filters applied by Katie’s imagination, and even providing the villainous PAL with a visual style all her own which both contrasts and compliments perfectly with the animation used for the rest of the film.
In addition to this the voice performances are incredible across the board. Olivia Coleman in particular as PAL manages to bring some real humanity to an otherwise relatively one-note villain, and considering she’s playing a smartphone A.I assistant it’s good that she gave as good as she did otherwise the character would have been mostly forgettable. The only voice performance I felt wasn’t quite right was Mike Rianda as Aaron. I think Aaron’s supposed to be like eight or nine years old, but Rianda’s performance makes him sound like he’s already gone through puberty as his voice is really deep. It’s a small issue but it did confuse me as to how old Aaron is supposed to be.
On the whole The Mitchell’s vs the Machine’s is a very good film. I may have sounded very harsh in my critique of the story, but it is very enjoyable overall, it just falls short in a couple of key areas that I feel do significantly hinder the quality of the overall product. But it will succeed in making you laugh, hitting you in the feels, and presenting a truly fantastic looking film. Though Into the Spider-Verse is still Sony Pictures Animation’s magnum opus, The Mitchell’s vs the Machines is still a very fun animated film for the whole family!
In addition to this the voice performances are incredible across the board. Olivia Coleman in particular as PAL manages to bring some real humanity to an otherwise relatively one-note villain, and considering she’s playing a smartphone A.I assistant it’s good that she gave as good as she did otherwise the character would have been mostly forgettable. The only voice performance I felt wasn’t quite right was Mike Rianda as Aaron. I think Aaron’s supposed to be like eight or nine years old, but Rianda’s performance makes him sound like he’s already gone through puberty as his voice is really deep. It’s a small issue but it did confuse me as to how old Aaron is supposed to be.
On the whole The Mitchell’s vs the Machine’s is a very good film. I may have sounded very harsh in my critique of the story, but it is very enjoyable overall, it just falls short in a couple of key areas that I feel do significantly hinder the quality of the overall product. But it will succeed in making you laugh, hitting you in the feels, and presenting a truly fantastic looking film. Though Into the Spider-Verse is still Sony Pictures Animation’s magnum opus, The Mitchell’s vs the Machines is still a very fun animated film for the whole family!