‘The Mitchells vs. The Machines’ is the ultimate family road trip movie in a robot apocalypse
Whenever a new animated feature drops on Netflix, I make a mental note to watch it to review. Then, inevitably, I forget and months go by before I get around to watching it. Thankfully, I had heard such high praise for this movie, I actually remembered to watch it! And man, what a great time!
“The Mitchells vs. The Machines” follows the Mitchell family on the day their daughter Katie (voiced by Abbi Jacobson of “Broad City”) is jet-setting off to college. She’s incredibly excited because her whole life she has felt like no one gets her. She’s an artist and a filmmaker and everyone thought she was weird (boy, can I relate). When she gets accepted to a film school in California, she instantly has a group of (virtual) friends ready and waiting for her arrival. She and her dad Rick (voiced by Danny McBride of comedy things galore) continually butt heads because they’re so similar and their current spat threatens to carry on after she leaves. But he has a plan! He cancels her plane ticket and plans a cross-country road trip to take her to college!
Katie is less than pleased.
Meanwhile, tech guru of PAL and Steve Jobs proxy Mark Bowman (Eric Andre) is about to make a huge announcement about the latest tech they’re going to release. He created the phone and personal virtual assistant PAL (think Siri, but with a digital face and voiced by Oscar winner Olivia Coleman) and is ready to launch the next big thing: personal home robots. Since everything has a “smart” chip in it these days, the robots can sync with all your appliances and do everything for you.
Guess what happens next.
Yep! Robot apocalypse! The Mitchells stop off at a roadside dinosaur attraction when everything goes crazy and they must work together to make it out of the mess in one piece.
The full article is available in our e-Edition. Click here to subscribe.