The Mitchells vs. the Machines  4 ½ stars

I caught up with the Netflix 2021 animated feature The Mitchells vs. the Machines which tells how a typical dysfunctional American family dealt with the great robot apocalypse of 2020. This amusing action-filled movie connects well with young and old audiences with its references to how people are dependent, even obsessed with their wireless devices and what happens when those connections go away. 18 year old Katie (Abbi Jacobson) is about to leave home to start film school in California. She has been fascinated about making her own movies and posting them on the internet, but her father (Danny McBride) just doesn’t get her. He thinks it isn’t right that the family is so involved with their handheld screens all the time. So he changes Katie’s plans to fly to California and instead make it into a family road trip with Mom (Maya Rudolph) and son Aaron (Michael Rianda, also the writer and director), who also happens to be obsessed with everything dinosaurs. Katie is more connected to brother Aaron than to either Dad or Mom. These plans are upset when the next generation AI device, a mobile robot is announced by CEO tech wizard Mark Bowman (Eric Andre), which angers the digital assistant app known as PAL (voiced by the amazing Olivia Colman). PAL takes control of the thousands of gleaming robots and sets about on her plan to capture and enslave the entire human population. (Will we never learn what happens when robots are given the capability of AI?) The movie can be described as The Fabelmans meets Terminator. Somehow the Mitchell family along with their ugly pug dog, Doug escape capture, thus it is up to them to defeat PAL and rescue humanity. Entertaining comedy and action follow as the dysfunctional family must work together and come up with plans to battle the robots and find their way to the lair of PAL. They are aided by a couple of malfunctioning robots (voiced by Beck Bennett and Fred Armison) who see something redeeming in the humans. It’s an imaginative take on our dependence on our digital devices and the importance of remaking connections with our family and friends. There is plenty of cartoon violence that can be enjoyed by all audiences.