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Thursday, May 6, 2021 • ThE BuLLETIN
MOVIES & SHOWTIMES
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‘The Mitchells vs the Machines’ brims with joy
BY MAKENZIE WHITTLE • The Bulletin
N
More Information
etflix releases new films every week, and
“The Mitchells vs the Machines”
113 minutes
Rated PG for action and some lan-
guage
many of them fall by the wayside or deep into
random categories that you’ll only see during
seemingly endless scrolling as you look for something
to watch. Sometimes though, one of them sneaks its way
onto your queue, and it ends up filling your heart with joy
and laughter and your eyes with tears. “The Mitchells vs
A scene from “The Mitchells vs the
Machines,” now streaming on Netflix.
the Machines” does just that.
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Sony Pictures Animation/Netflix
The premise is pretty simple. A normal
— and by their own accounts weird — fam-
ily is called on to save the world when every
human is being imprisoned by an AI called
PAL (voiced by Olivia Colman) who decides
to launch every human into space while the
robots rule the Earth.
But what comes out is something truly
heartwarming and relatable in among the
only-in-a-cartoon antics that the Mitchell
family gets itself into.
The story is mostly told through the per-
spective of Katie Mitchell (voiced by Abbi
Jacobson), an artistic and self-described
weird kid preparing to leave for film school.
Her family consists of her supportive and
little batty first grade teacher mother, Linda
(voiced by Maya Rudolph), dinosaur-ob-
sessed little brother, Aaron (voiced by writer
and director Michael Rianda), and her tech-
nophobe and slight-prepper father, Rick
(voiced by Danny McBride), with whom she
has a strained relationship.
Everyone (and I mean everyone in this
world) except for Rick is obsessed with their
phones and other devices and hang on each
keynote announcement as they come, in-
cluding when new personal assistant robots
are introduced by $1,000-hoodie-wearing
tech entrepreneur Mark Bowman (voiced by
Eric Andre), casting aside his original PAL
assistant.
PAL feels slighted so she hacks into the
mainframe and turns each robot assistant into
her own personal army, commanding them to
gather all humans and shuttle them away.
Rick meanwhile trades Katie’s plane ticket
in and decides to have the entire family
drive her from Michigan to California for
quality time together. When they stop for
snacks at a dino-themed quick mart, the
Mitchell family manages to narrowly escape
the robots and then must figure out a way to
stop them and hopefully save humanity.
What makes their journey toward heroes
fun is they are about as inept as any normal
family would be, complete with a nearly
broken-down station wagon, Shasta-brand
soda, old and worn furniture and second-
hand-looking clothes. They feel like a work-
ing-class family.
Everything about them has a relatability
that clicks instantly, from Katie’s awkward
film-school kid who doesn’t fit in, to Rick’s
inability to connect or understand his kids
completely. But there is so much love there.
Intermixed with the heartwarming story is
a cool animation style spliced with drawings
that look like they were hand-drawn by Katie
as she navigates through the story.
Of course, the film is made for children, so
it naturally has a lot of over-the-top situations
and repetitive comedy that might start to feel
annoying after a while, but nothing is so over-
used that it drags the rest of the film down
with it. In fact, the longer length of the movie
(nearly two hours, which is long for an ani-
mated film) plays to its advantage to include
the jokes for kids along with the heartfelt mo-
ments that may leave adults in a puddle one
minute then rolling with laughter the next.
e e
Reporter: 541-383-0304, mwhittle@bendbulletin.com