For some reason, on my return flight, I felt like watching only animated features. Eh, different airline, different options. This animation hadn't especially tempted me before the Academy Award nomination announcement, tho I did have it tentatively on my Netflix list. Regardless, it was the first one I found available that I hadn't seen or rejected.
The Mitchells are all a little quirky, but that doesn't mean they get along swimmingly like the Addams Family. In particular, narrator Katie (Abbi Jacobson), who's about to start film school, has trouble finding common ground with her Luddite dad, Rick (Danny McBride). He decides to take the family on a long road trip to the school for bonding's sake. It's during this ride that an AI called PAL (Olivia Colman), shown as a crude face on a smartphone, goes Skynet and everything with an intact related chip -- which is nearly omnipresent, especially in the latest robots -- does her bidding. Thanks to sheer luck and an old car, the Mitchells are soon the last known uncaptured humans. Will they have the teamwork and other skills to save everyone else?
I wondered for a while how a kid-friendly movie could cover an apocalypse. Well, PAL is merciful enough to give humans the electronic entertainment they so desire, only in individual pods to be launched into space. It might be a lot like the future depicted in WALL-E, except that we get no assurance that the captives would have their biological needs met. Murderous or not, it's clear that she hasn't ended any lives just yet.
It's pretty easy to see how PAL got this way: Her creator, Mark Bowman (Eric André), unceremoniously tosses her as soon as he thinks he's made something better. At the same time, humans have grown awfully emotionally reliant on wi-fi and other modern tech. And did you ever think about how it would feel to be treated like a common smartphone? From an AI perspective, there's not much to recommend clemency for humanity. Still, we viewers can't help rooting for the Mitchells.
Oh yeah, I should talk about the other Mitchells. Mother Linda (Maya Rudolph) may be the most normal of the bunch; the strangest thing she does is attempt food in her daughter's likeness. Kid brother Aaron (Mike Rianda, who also directed and co-wrote the movie) is probably in his single digits given his obsession with dinosaurs and nervousness around girls, but you'd hardly guess it from his adultlike voice. Then there's Monchi (Doug the Pug), a dim, cross-eyed dog whose most obvious value is in blowing robots' circuits by not looking quite canine enough. That's not a spoiler; it happens in the trailer.
Rianda based the Mitchells loosely on his own family, which does add a little heartwarming quality once you know it. I do not know whether his family includes a sexual or gender minority such as Katie. You can be forgiven for overlooking that detail; the only evidence, however compelling, is in a plot-unimportant fleeting line.
That may be the celebrated first for Sony Pictures Animation, but it's not the most distinctive aspect to my mind. Via Katie's imagination, there are a lot of hand-drawn add-ons to the CG imagery. We don't get as many artistic styles as in the same studio's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, but a smidgen of live footage/photography is thrown in. That, plus the various references to RL brands, makes me think we're supposed to see this movie as "realer" than other animated features in spite of its kookiness.
The result is very high on energy. That can be good or bad depending on the audience. I figure it mostly appeals to kids, as does the overall sense of humor (I never got far into the same writers' Gravity Falls), but it might have been just what I needed when tired.
It kinda bothers me that this has a higher IMDb rating than the three Disney entries in the Best Animated Feature category. Then again, Disney could use an incentive to up its game.
No comments:
Post a Comment