My kids were smitten by this brilliantly funny family adventure
The Mitchells vs the Machines PG cert, 114 min
Dir Michael Rianda
Starring Abbi Jacobson, Danny Mcbride, Olivia Colman, Maya Rudolph, Michael Rianda (voices)
What would it take, these days, for a family on holiday to shut off the Wi-fi and enjoy some gadget-free quality time? According to The Mitchells vs the Machines, a full-blown apocalyptic robot uprising. It’s a relentlessly funny and ingenious animation, designed in a way that feels unique: a hybrid of gleaming computer graphics and madcap, felt-tip scribbles.
The film’s young heroine is Katie (voiced by Abbi Jacobson), an aspiring director who wins a place at an art school far from home. She has found her relationship with her dad Rick (Danny Mcbride) becoming strained: this outdoorsy chap can’t get his head around his daughter’s bizarre short films, or the technology used to make them. Meanwhile, her mother Linda (Maya Rudolph) despairs of the two oddballs she’s raised – the couple’s younger son Aaron, voiced by Michael Rianda, the director, is a dinosaurobsessed recluse – and flicks through snaps of happier, more stylish families on Instagram.
Rick’s big idea to set things right is to turn Katie’s move to college into a family roadtrip. Unfortunately, this coincides with what’s essentially a child-friendly version of The Terminator: an army of personal-assistant androids created by a Silicon Valley corporation goes rogue, and starts to round up Earth’s human population under the command of a malign AI, hilariously voiced by Olivia Colman.
“Who would have thought a tech company wouldn’t have had our best interests at heart?” Linda quails, while every device in sight lights up with instructions to come quietly. Thinking fast, Rick confiscates and stamps on the Mitchells’ various screens – and it falls to the family to go off-grid and defeat the robot army, pulling together for humanity’s sake. But the brilliant script never stoops to anything so facile as “technology = bad” – rather, all the gags nip playfully at what these appliances and networks reveal about our very human needs and insecurities.
The Mitchells vs the Machines keeps its energy high with changes of scale, tone and pace. Halfway through, the film pauses for an uproarious Dawn of the Dead-inspired interlude in a shopping centre, with the zombies replaced by a certain blood-curdling soft toy of yesteryear. My two kids were just as smitten: both asked me when they could rewatch it, before it had even finished. Since it’s a Netflix release, the answer is “whenever”. But I hope the streamer considers making it available to cinemas from May 17: there could hardly be a more delightful welcome back. RC