The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)

The Mitchells vs. the Machines arrives as a Sony Pictures Animation production that was sold to Netflix during a pandemic, and it carries itself with the frantic energy of a family road trip that has gone sideways into a robot apocalypse. The film concerns Katie Mitchell, an aspiring filmmaker who clashes with her technophobic father Rick before the two are forced to reconcile while saving humanity. It is warm, visually inventive, and sincere. Our task here is classification, not enjoyment, though the two occasionally intersect.

On the matter of representation, the film assembles a reasonably diverse group of voices and gives Katie a girlfriend named Jade who appears without ceremony or explanation. This is the modern approach: the identity is present, unremarked upon, and folded into the texture of the story. Katie's creative ambitions and her supportive mother Linda supply a gentle feminine current, though nobody mounts a podium to explain it. The villain is a tech billionaire whose discarded AI turns on humanity, which gestures toward a critique of corporate power, but the film is more interested in the sentimental bond between parent and child than in dismantling capital.

The climax features a speech about connection and family that could have curdled into a sermon, yet the filmmakers keep it light and let the jokes carry the weight. There is no engagement with race, climate, body image, neurodivergence, or the rewriting of history. What we have is a well-made animated comedy with a handful of contemporary touches and no appetite for grievance. It is pleasant. It is also, for our purposes, mostly quiet.