Sony Pictures Animation has sure been the talk of the past few years, especially since they released the brilliant Spider-Man Into the Spider Verse movie. When it was revealed that one of their next movies was gonna be about a dysfunctional family surviving a robot apocalypse with a side story about a traditional father connecting with her phone savvy daughter, I’ll admit that I had my doubts of how it would turn out with how a father daughter story would mesh well with an end of the world robot apocalypse. Thankfully, I was wrong and the film may just as well be another hit for the Sony Animation Studio.
Katie Mitchell (Abbie Jacobson) has always been a weirdo and her family is no different. Her brother Aaron (Mike Rianda) loves dinosaurs, the mother (Maya Rudolph) is always awkward, the father (Danny Mcbride) is a traditional outdoors loving person and their dog is just plain strange. When Katie is accepted into film school, she is excited to leave her family behind until her father forces her to come along on a family road trip to take Katie to her new school instead of her taking a plane to get there. To make matters even worse the tech company Pal has released a new smart robot that can do anything but soon enough the robots start to turn evil and capture every single human on earth. With the Mitchells still standing after the apocalypse can they come together as a family to save the world from total human annihilation?
The most interesting thing to point out when it comes to the overall tone and writing style of the movie is mentioning that the directors and writers are none other than Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe. If those names sound familiar it’s because they are most well known for writing episodes for the Disney Channel show Gravity Falls alongside the show’s creator Alex Hirsch. It honestly explains why the writing is much smarter than you’d think because not only does the movie have a lot of fun with a dysfunctional family taking a road trip during a robot apocalypse but it’s also great at grounding our characters in some form of emotional reality despite how outlandish the world of the Mitchells really is. There is a lot of humor to go around as the jokes and pokes at technology corporations are funny and even relevant to today's culture. However, the movie never forgets to show it’s heart at times which can lead to some of the film’s most unexpectedly emotional and heartfelt moments.
The Mitchells family often reminds me of other dysfunctional families like The Simpsons or even The Incredibles. All the members of the family each have a moment to shine and each have a distinctive personality that makes them funny and relatable. The writing when it comes to showing Kaite and Rick’s father-daughter relationship is spot on, all those years writing for the Pines family in Gravity Falls have definitely paid off. There is also a great amount of humor that just comes from the characters just being their odd and over the top selves but still have an amount of relatability so the audience can care about what happens to them.
Let’s talk about the animation because it may be some of the most expressive and even ambitious animation the studio has done and that’s saying something considering that Spider Verse exists. The majority of the movie uses a very stylish 3D animation that has hints of a 2D animation like feel. Speaking of which there is also a ton and I mean a ton of 2D animated bits scattered throughout the movie, these over the top but unique visuals perfectly communicate katies crazy and creative point of view. The music is also a lot of fun as it kinda reminds me of the style of soundtrack usually heard in the lego movies.
This is what The Emoji Movie should have been, heck this is what Ralph breaks the Internet should have been in my opinion. While it won’t stand the test of time like most of the timeless Disney or Pixar movies, The Mitchels vs the Machines is a super fun joy ride that has personality, humor and an unexpected level of heart that you’d think wouldn’t be present in such an insane premise. It's clear that Sony Pictures Animation is heading in a new direction and if they keep putting out well made family entertainment like this and Spiderverse, they may have a shot at playing with the big boys in the animation business
(Final Grade A-)