The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)
Directed by Mike Rianda
A quirky, dysfunctional family's road trip is upended when they find themselves in the middle of the robot apocalypse and suddenly become humanity's unlikeliest last hope.
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What critics say influenced The Mitchells vs. the Machines
The producers include Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the inspired duo behind “The Lego Movie” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse,” and “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” has the same breakneck gift for comic timing and a willingness to throw anything at the screen if it’ll get a laugh, including an angry Furby the size of an office tower.
A lot of primo animation talent is assembled for The Mitchells vs. the Machines , including producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who were behind The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse , and writer-directors Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe, late of the popular Disney Channel toon series Gravity Falls .
Somehow, this combination of fizzing form and freewheeling function coheres perfectly — think the meta-explosion of Scott Pilgrim absorbed into the creative ingenuity of The LEGO Movie , with a Spider-Verse visual overhaul.
Although written and directed by newcomers Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe, the main creative personnel behind it, at least from a promotional standpoint, are co-producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, whose previous efforts have included the likes of "The Lego Movie" and "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse," two of the most ingenious and engaging American animated features to come along in recent years.
It’s a bold move from an animated feature, but I’d also expect no less ambition coming from producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller (The LEGO Movie), which in terms of humor is exactly what this feels like.
The advance media screener for the new film from super-star animation mega-producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The Lego Movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) arrived in my digital queue in the thick of Ontario’s rainy April break last week and proved to be an absolute lifesaver for a family stuck indoors.
The producers include Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the inspired duo behind “The Lego Movie” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse,” and “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” has the same breakneck gift for comic timing and a willingness to throw anything at the screen if it’ll get a laugh, including an angry Furby the size of an office tower.
As it’s produced by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, you can almost see echoes of their tremendously fun Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse the way it taps into the splashy elements of comic book style art.
A lot of primo animation talent is assembled for The Mitchells vs. the Machines , including producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who were behind The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse , and writer-directors Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe, late of the popular Disney Channel toon series Gravity Falls .
It took over two decades for any other major mainstream animated movie to feel quite so revolutionary, but Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse — from powerhouse production duo Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, working with filmmakers Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman and Bob Persichetti — was an eye-sizzling superhero movie so sophisticated, it felt like it had beamed in from another universe altogether.
The animation style is complex and layered, which is to be expected from Sony Pictures Animation, the same studio behind the Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018).
While its absence from cinemas is a shame, the film itself is an absolute joy, marking another monster hit for producing duo Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the creative geniuses behind Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse .
Rianda and Jeff Rowe’s script is nimble and clever, with wry nods to sources that will delight aspiring Katies (there’s a particularly sublime reference to Kill Bill ) but sail blissfully over the heads of unwitting Aarons.
Best of all, The Mitchells vs. the Machines boasts a broad sweep of appeal, with slapstick and a boss-eyed pug for the little ones, enough sass and parental humiliation to satisfy teens, and tonnes of fun references for the grown-ups ( Kill Bill , Tron , Gremlins , Ghostbusters ).
Rudolph is typically delightful as the peacemaker mother, but her performance reaches another level when Linda gets her Kill Bill on in the climax.
Classics like “Mad Max” and “Dawn of the Dead” are namechecked even when Rianda’s debt to them is self-evident — a mall set piece in which the Mitchells are cornered by a massive Furby that proclaims “Behold, the twilight of man” is the kind of “dumb on paper but hilarious on screen” idea that Lord and Miller productions have specialized in since “21 Jump Street” — while viewers are also free to spot or infer visual references to everything from “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” to “Beyond the Black Rainbow.”
Phil Lord and Chris Miller have found a way to put their unmistakable stamp on the animated feature world with such out-of-the-box fresh hits as Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, The Lego Movie, The Lego Batman Movie and their Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, not to mention pitch-perfect live-action comedies like 21 Jump Street.
Now full disclosure, I am a HUGE fan of Lord and Miller's films, specifically "21 Jump Street", the first "Lego Movie" and of course "Into the Spiderverse".
True to their style — which also fueled 2012’s “21 Jump Street” and “The Lego Movie” — the film is consistently, almost disconcertingly funny: The laughs come at a clip few movies can sustain, stacked so dense, repeat viewing (and in some cases, strategic freeze-framing) is required to catch them all.
After a slew of monstrous hits, the signature Lord and Miller style of barbarian, laugh-a-minute gags that had anyone who saw “21 Jump Street'' in stitches, shows minor signs of wear and tear.
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There’s a heart-removal gag like in Cloudy , there’s a scene staged (and audibly referenced) like Dawn of the Dead (1978), a use of Quincy Jones’s “Ironside” that’s sure to illicit a specific memory response, and others.
I wanted to bring the chaotic energy of Warner Bros. cartoons, and these Hal Ashby movies that are more grounded, mixed with “2001” (1968), “Enter the Void” (2009), and these crazy, more adult movies for the robot-side of things.”
The Machines from Netflix likely evokes shades of Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World stirred with a scoop of Clark Griswold-like shenanigans.