Movie Review: The Mitchells Vs The Machines

May 05, 2021 06:00 am

If you have been waiting for a movie to give Furby the takedown it deserves, you are in luck.

Over the weekend, Netflix quietly dropped one of the best films of the year.

Produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and utilising animation techniques developed for the Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, The Mitchells Vs The Machines is filled with joy from start to finish.

It's what you really want from Netflix – films worthy of the big screen.

When teenage Katie Mitchell (voiced by Abbi Jacobson) heads off to film school, her overly eager father (Danny McBride) decides the journey can be a last family road trip - until it coincides with a robot apocalypse as Olivia Colman's spurned artificial intelligence takes revenge on her creator.

This is a family comedy in all senses. The jokes are a fine mix of silly and smart, the animation is stunning, the voice cast spot on, it is packed with ideas and the emotion (always a troubling element in family films) is just right – sweet but never mawkish.

The film, starring Constance Wu, and Henry Golding, grossed US$239 million (S$325 million) globally.

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And while there is a message to put the phone down every so often, it's not preachy.

The exuberance and passion the team put in really comes off the screen, from the extra flourishes of Katie's "doodle emojis" to the amazing world design.

And yes, the Furby moment is a gloriously daft highlight destined to be memed from now until the robots actually do take over.

THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES (PG13)